Alive and Dead
by Esbie
Summary: Imagine if at the end of "Ascend" Loki would've died, and even Sara could'nt have saved him? Can Wendy survive forever in her alive-and-dead stature of depression? When a newcomer is there in Forening, Wendy however sees both a spark of hope in the newcomer, and an ignition of a much more provocative danger from the Vittra. Will the odds be in her favor this time?
1. Chapter 1

_Hey reader,_

 _Let me just tell you, it is indeed a privilege for me for the fact that you are just reading this piece of fanfictional story that I have written on my own, twisting and turning the existing plots and characters of my favorite Amanda Hocking. I agree wholeheartedly that "Alive and Dead" is indeed a very long piece of fanfiction, with several chapters. But let me advise you, just by seeing the length of this story, don't quit reading it. I mean, you read the entire Trylle series, and you can't spare time for this. Because, even though the story has a sad and my-world-sucks starting, I can assure all readers that this story will definitely have a beautiful, my-world-could've-never-been-better ending._

– _Sharanya Staad –_

Chapter One

Assassination

At this point of my life, it seemed impossible to figure out whether what was happening was happening in the reality or in my dreams. Maybe if I woke up from the dream that I was living, I would still be napping in my history class and my waker would be Mr. Meade, ordering me to go to the headmaster's office. And maybe if I even tried to use persuasion (the supernatural Trylle ability I possessed, which enabled me to manipulate people in a pretty creepy manner) on Mr. Meade, there would be no effect and he still would be glowering at me like I just killed his wife.

Maybe after waking up, if I looked around to see who all had watched me wiping the drool from my chin, I would notice every high-school student staring at me except for Finn Holmes (my ex-tracker and lover; also my first love, which had turned out to be ultimately pretty unsuccessful).

It was an eerie type of feeling; too much unlike a dream and like the reality, and too much unlike the reality and like a dream. First of all, all that I was viewing inside my dream seemed far too unnatural and inhuman to actually be real. The shocks that my heart radiated also seemed like the moment when I'm about to wake up from a dream and face the reality.

But I didn't wake up to face the reality; I was already facing it. The reality shocked me; first of all a limp head separated from the rest of its body rolling at my direction. When the head stopped, bumping at my feet, I looked down to see whose decapitated head it was. Dark, long cropped hair, identifying the person as a troll; bloodshot eyes that actually were in shock; the evil smirk turned into a pained curl of the lips. Nothing would make me mistaken even the decapitated remains of this man to be the Vittra king – Oren – my own biological father whom I had just killed seconds ago.

The rest of his body in expensive greyish slacks and a silken dress shirt lay somewhere nearby. I could see the raw flesh even through my emotionally blurred vision, sticking out of the throat, and the gruesome blood staining the shirt like wildfire. That was all a minority; so were Kyra and her fellow Vittra tracker writhing in pain, trying unsuccessfully to scream and instead letting out a horrible guttural groan.

The thing that caught most of my attention was the limp body of Loki lying on the ground, the fancy sword with the diamond-crested bell guard piercing him straight in the heart, where he had already borne an existing scar, and the tip of the blade sticking out from his shoulder blade.

I still remembered his last seconds of life, when he had literally been hanging from Kyra and another male tracker's grip. When Oren had picked up the sword and walked towards him, and I had been pleading him to stop and promising every single thing in return. Just as the sword had pierced his heart and the Vittra trackers had let him drop to the ground, he had just managed to utter one last word "Sara . . ."

I had unintentionally used some of my telekinesis and managed to put Oren in a pretty defenseless state, after which I had assassinated him by cutting off his head. Loki's body lying on the floor was the most horrifying thing I could have ever been near, but still I ran towards him as fast as it was possible with the long chiffon stuff I had chosen to wear for a war.

Everything about him suggested that there was no way he could be saved, and that Oren had done whatever he had desired to do to him. Blood poured from his wound, his eyes were motionless, unblinking, there was no hint of movement or jerk in his body. Yet even dead, he looked so gorgeous to me, with his dirty blonde hair through which I had always loved ruffling my fingers, his sweet lips which would do everything as to joke even at critical times to kiss me tenderly, and his tanned skin which I had always seemed a pleasure to have contact with.

I leaned down next to his corpse, watching the Loki whom I myself never knew that I had loved so much. The bile in my throat had risen at such an unbearable level that it was hard to swallow it. Tears poured down my eyes and my lips let out a shaky sob, which eventually turned into a series of wails.

Despite the blood on his shirt, I pressed my face to his chest, wanting to seek his warmth and hear his heart beating for me. "Loki, Loki" I gulped and coughed, choking myself on my own sobs. "Please come back, I love you. You're the only thing I need now, please come back to me Loki."

I got up, and not caring to wipe any of the tears or blood staining my face, I reached out for his mouth. I blew in air inside his mouth, feeling his chest rising and falling shakily under my palms, but it was completely useless. He was dead, for once and for all. There was no way I could bring him back from the dead.

"Loki, please, I love you" my voice broke down, and it must have been quite a while with me sitting down beside him and crying, before I noticed someone else behind me.

In a red gown with black embroidery in it, stood the Vittra queen – Sara. Her hair was perfect in its sleek ponytail and so were her skin and clothes. She didn't seem to show the least participation in the war, and I wondered where she must have been hiding during the time the entire Vittra kingdom was in chaos. Loki's last word was her name – a fact that made me feel slightly jealous since I was probably supposed to expect something like my name or 'I love you' from his mouth when he was dying – but I didn't have any more time to waste, feeling jealous about things. If Loki had said her name, it was sure to be for an important purpose – a purpose that would have been his ultimate key.

For a moment I just looked at her physically, comparing her perfect looks to my imperfect and messy ones. But then I looked at her genetically, and realized the following facts: Sara Elsing was a troll, being half Trylle and half Vittra. Her Vittra traits made her infertile and the Vittra queen, and her Trylle traits made her a healer. It took me a while to realize that she could actually _heal_ people, and that she could also heal _Loki_. That was what his last hope was, that Sara being the closest Vittra to him would definitely find a way to heal him even if his condition would be humanly irreparable.

"Sara," I said, sounding partially so thankful and relieved, and partially choked up.

"You're really in love with him." She said gravely, but I didn't need to be told that. Nothing would have made me realize how badly I was in love with Loki until this moment.

"Sara, you have to heal him. You have to save him. We can't . . . leave him like this. We have to do something . . . anything." I managed to say that much without bursting into tears again.

"Ever since I had realized how much endangered Loki was by the Vittra king, I did everything I could do save him; to protect him from the claws of Oren. I still would do the same, but how can I ever explain to you the complications of his case at the moment. He's dead Wendy; it's as simple as that. He cannot be brought back to life, no matter whatever efforts you put into this."

The words felt like a cold pang of distrust, since I had always differentiated Sara from the other Vittra, thinking she might be more cooperative, understanding and thoughtful than her husband. It felt horrible knowing that the only person who could have helped me at this critical moment was not doing so, and of course other healers like Aurora Kroner would not have accepted such requests even when ordered by the queen, so Sara as my only hope in being able to help Loki.

"Please, I can't see him like this. I can't live without him, and you have got to understand what I mean by that." I pleaded, tears staining my neck and chest.

"I do understand, princess, surprisingly very well. I'm just not capable of –" she started, but I cut her off, standing up from my kneeled posture on the floor beside Loki, and coming towards her.

I must have scared Sara since she slightly flinched and seemed to also move back a little when I approached her. But that didn't make me step back and try to ease her; I was anyways going to torture her, and a little natural intimidation would do well with it. I gathered up whatever little energy I was left with, and using the best of that concentration, thought as piercingly as I could _Sara, you are going to do whatever you are going to, use whatever powers you possess, and you are going to heal Loki. You will bring him back from the dead_.

"Princess, you are too weak to try to use persuasion on me. I suggest you get some rest and I'll explain you the details later." Sara came forward and tried to comfort me. But I wasn't in the mood to give up, since I was all but desperate to awaken Loki from the dead. I continued mentally saying _You will go heal Loki, right now. It is the only thing you need to do right now. You have to bring him back from the dead; I need him alive and you have to do it._ And very soon I was muttering the same things physically.

Sara however didn't get hypnotized, and tried to talk me instead into not trying to waste my energy and how she could not get Loki back to life even if she tried. My eyes were getting painful, keeping them constantly open, and soon something thick dripped from them. I assumed them to be tears but when I got a hint of the smell, I knew it was blood.

Moisture dripped from my nose, and my ears felt wet – all of which was unmistakably blood. I opened my mouth which felt thick inside with the claustrophobic temperature and moisture inside, and a stream of blood went down my lower lip, trickling down my chin. I looked down at my exposed forearm, and it blood came oozing out of the veins in my wrist and from the carpel joints.

Black spots interrupted my vision, and I tripped on something – probably Oren's head – and then the spots became an entire canopy of blackness.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Explanation

The white ceiling with the gold, glassy chandelier made it obvious that I was in Forening. It wasn't exactly a mystery as to how I must have got here, assuming that after I must have won the war and passed out, Sara would have called a couple of guards or Trylle people to carry me safely to one of the cars, from where someone must have driven me back to Forening.

I wouldn't exactly call it winning a war, since after whatever freedom, safety and victory I had brought over to the Trylle tribe, I had traded it for the troll who was the most valuable for me. Thinking of _him_ still made my heart ache, and almost as an instant reaction to my thoughts about him, my eyes became slightly watery.

When I could tune out my feelings about _him_ aside with some obvious efforts, I got up from my sleeping position and looked around the room. It was my old room – the one which I had first been given when I had arrived in Forening.

The unnatural bleeding from my hands, eyes and mouth had stopped, and someone had been kind enough to wipe the blood wherever it must have stained my body. I was still in the chiffon gown I had worn on the war day, and I decided if I would be able to move around comfortably, I might have a shower and change into something cleaner from my room closet.

Apparently it turned out that getting up was a little strained, but I could still manage it. The warm water helped soothe down whatever wounds Oren and the other Vittra had caused, and a strange sense of déjà vu encircled me when I stepped out of the bathroom in a fluffy bathrobe and saw Finn standing by the window. He tensed when he heard the bathroom door open, and slowly looked at my direction with caution.

"Hello Finn." I said gravely.

He nodded. "Hello, your majesty." His words made me flinch since it made me realize that now I was not a girlish, immature and free princess, but a proper queen with actual duties and the burden of the entire kingdom on my shoulders.

"How much time since the war?" I spoke shortly. It wasn't generally to be my habit to speak shortly and keep my mouth shut so much, but depression, loss and regret had taken over me, and now I didn't feel like using too many words in my sentences.

"Today is the third day. How do you feel, Wendy?"

"How can you – you out of all people – ask me this question, Finn? And it can't be possible that _you_ don't know about what happened." I could feel blackmailing tears at the back off my eyes. I gulped the bile in my throat, letting a tear out, which I hurriedly wiped, though not enough for Finn to not notice that.

"I'm sorry. Maybe you are thinking that I'm not at all concerned or sorry about that, but I do feel bad for whatever happened." he was probably waiting for a reply, and if the normal, not-so-depressed me would have been there, then maybe I would have said something like 'thanks for your concern' or 'I'm sorry I shouted at you', but now I was far too painfully numb to even manage to think of a suitable reply to what he said, and instead just stayed quite.

"So . . . do you want me to give you the updates of what happened when you were under hospitalization?" I wasn't sure whether I actually wanted to know or not, so didn't say anything. Finn however continued speaking "People had been deciding if they should have the funerals for Elora and the chancellor while you were under medical care, but then they decided to give Forening, Oslinna and Ondarike some more time to recover from the past attacks, so we are probably having it somewhere next week. Also Kanin and Omte trolls would be coming for Elora's funeral, so we were required to give early notices to the foreign trolls to plan their visits.

"Then after Oren's death, Sara is now up for ruling Ondarike – for which she of course needs some cooperation from the Trylle for the destruction we had caused, but then Markis Bain and some other marksinna – not Laris – have gone to give Sara a hand in the change of ruling after the several decades of dealing Oren. Maybe Tove is planning to go too, when you get into a suitable condition for ruling.

"Oslinna is now in a much better condition, Matt is still there to help in the architecture of the houses. The Vittra hasn't fully come into peaceful terms with the Trylle, but maybe if we Trylle set in a treaty with them, go according to it and help them in times like these, we might actually have some peace between us.

"As for the war causalities, some people were injured, but few were actually killed. (Very few maybe, but even just one of the killed ones had meant the entire world to me) Garrett was in a pretty critical condition, but it seems that he at least made it out alive from the war.

"Out of upcoming events, there would be a funeral separately for Elora and a combined funeral separately for the chancellor and the dead from the war. Also you are supposed to make a public appearance along with Tove, for announcing the treaty to the Trylle and the Vittra. Sara's coronation is still on the waiting list, in case we seemed to have earned enough respect to enter her lands. If yes, then you and Tove would be attending it.

"Also, according to what I have learnt by interacting with a couple of people is that many of them are dying to talk to you. For instance, Willa, Matt, Rhys, Tove, Garrett, Aurora, your host aunt, Sara –"

"Sara wanted to talk to me? Is she here now?" that caught my attention. I had ever since been furious at her for not saving _him_ when she could have done so, and being an important person in the restoration of the Vittra kingdom after Oren's assassination, she must have very little time to actually come over and talk to me in person.

"Well, yes. Apparently she should be helping in the progressing of Ondarike, but turns out that she has her own minions who would do her jobs for her. Also she had estimated your healing time astonishingly well, so she didn't have a minute go wasted on her trip to Forening. Would you like to speak to her?"

I nodded, and without further instructions of what to do, I went back to the bathroom to get into some decent clothing before the Vittra queen appeared in my bedroom to see me semi-naked in just a bathrobe. Once in a simple long dress, I sat on the couch and waited for Sara to arrive and speak whatever she had desired to.

"Princess," said Sara as soon as she opened the door. I didn't give her much of a response except looking at her direction, and without needing to be told, she came inside and took her seat on the loveseat. Behind her, it was habitually annoying to see Duncan, standing like a guard by the door. "You may excuse us, Duncan." I said monotonously.

Well, it looked like even Duncan could understand and would respect my problems and my depression at this moment, because without being told twice, he left me with Sara, shutting the door behind him. "I heard that you were _dying_ to speak to me." My voice actually sounded kind of evil.

"Everyone is. Afterall being probably the first teenager to have killed a pure-blood Vittra is a great achievement, one that has bought you fame all over the Kanin and Skojare tribes. And well . . . I can actually explain my reasons for . . ."

I gulped, and so did she, as we both turned away from each other slightly so that we didn't have eye contact anymore. It was relatively more comfortable that way. "You must know that I am not genetically entirely Trylle; half Trylle and half Vittra, though my home is in Ondarike. Due to this I have some qualities that Trylle possess and some qualities that Trylle don't possess, all in equilateral quantities. Therefore, being a Trylle, my ability is that of a healer, but however it isn't as advanced and productive as the pure-blood Trylle healing abilities.

"The reason being simple, that I am a half-Trylle. In this case, I can heal basic wounds and injuries, recover someone from a major disease. Even bringing someone back from coma is a difficult task for half-Trylle like me; it takes up a large quantity of your energy, leaving a simple coma restoration job done with the healer's condition like yours had been after the war.

"Bringing someone back from dead is something completely impossible for a half-Trylle- half-Vittra like me. Maybe a pure-blood Trylle would have such advanced abilities, but not someone genetically like me. I'm sorry for whatever happened, you can't say you don't believe that I am. I wanted him alive, smiling here right now just as much as you did; but just like you, I wasn't capable of doing so."

I nodded, without answering. I wanted to argue with her and tell her that she was wrong and selfish, but ultimately I had no valid argument point and she _was_ right. Being a half- Vittra and half-Trylle, she had some deficiencies in her Trylle abilities. She got up, and started leaving, but then paused and said "I kind of understand your desperation for love, but holding such an important position as a married Trylle queen, you seemed to have no chance with him."

That immediately got my attention, and I flared up. "I had a wonderful chance with him in the future. You don't know; Tove had offered up to divorce me, so that I could actually have someone whom I love as the king, and not someone whom I am forcefully supposed to marry and rule with."

Sara was practically left speechless at my sudden outburst, and simply just nodded and walked away from my room. When she was gone, I fell on my knees to the floor. Tears won against my cornea and soon I was sobbing on my knees with my tears soaking my dress.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Funeral

"Wendy?" I snapped out of my whirlpool of downheartedness, and looked at Willa who was standing in my closet – literally inside my closet, its size was so huge – and holding out a clothing item.

"What?" I barely uttered.

"Are you asleep? I'm asking which one you would prefer to wear." She held out two black dresses – one that was all lacy, and the second one that looked like silk. Except the material quality, both seemed pretty much of the same kind.

"This one's better." I picked out any random dress – the silk one, it apparently turned out. I would have liked to say something dull like 'I don't care' or 'choose whatever you like', but that would only make Willa more upset and cause her to fuss over my outfit all the more. Also, I did care about the event, though not enough to actually dress time-consumingly.

Willa was thinking about some creative ideas in order to make me feel better such as pressing my hair or some cool smoky eyes, but there was only one impossible thing that I knew would make me feel better. So I cut her off, somehow acting irate and uninterested in her ways to 'make me feel better'.

Today – almost a week later from the day I had conversed with Sara – was Elora's funeral. Trolls from different tribes had come to attend the funeral, and some we would even be hosting in the mansion itself in guest rooms in the north wing. I guess I was naturally expecting some dark, stormy climate and snow during the funeral, because today was just cold with low precipitation chances.

After the war, I had been kind of emotionally unstable. This had resulted in my loss of appetite, which had already been so less due to my Trylle traits that now it seemed that I went for days on just energy pills and immunity drugs, which have been suggested forcefully by a psychiatrist, who came to occasionally see me.

Also I seemed to crave for solitude and silence, wasn't left out for talking much, had difficulty concentrating or focusing much on anything, was numb and silenced, and had frequent mood swings. From acting hysterical due to something I find hilarious and then realizing that I wasn't supposed to laugh and ultimately ending up sounding loony, to wailing in trebles, I could change my mood in seconds.

Often I had this crazy mood where I would start screaming, shouting, wailing, breaking and throwing around things and ultimately dirtying myself from head to toe with water, blood, dust, ink and torn bits of paper. This wouldn't happen very often – maybe once in two days of an average – yet when it did, it took time for me to calm down slowly step-by-step and then turn back into my normal numbness.

I even had a psychiatrist on Tove's suggestion, when he thought that my condition was getting too unmanageable. But in a way, everything that was a consequence of _his_ loss was just involuntary. Duncan, Rhys and tove seemed to be pretty patient and cooperative since my depressed state, but Matt, Willa and Finn weren't all that sensitive.

Matt began complaining and criticizing the Trylle and all trolls, blaming them for my instability. Even though I tried to make him believe even in my unstable state that the Trylle or the Vittra weren't the reason why I had become that way, he never managed to get entirely convinced by my words. Ultimately I had to use persuasion on him and put him into a dreamy, robotic manipulation, which I had later regretted so much that I had spent hours in some spare room, trashing around things in extreme frustration.

Willa seemed to think that entertainment, talking, and new things to do would keep me from thinking about the unthinkable person and the unmentionable memories, when actually anything productive to pass time with would be the last thing I would want. And usually even her ideas of entertainment seemed too fancy and princessy for me – pedicures, nail-art, dying honey highlights on my brown hair, tattooing, piercing my eyebrows, etc. – and I failed to find anything out of these that I could actually enjoy doing. But then, was there even anything left that I would actually _enjoy_ doing?

Finn, I had thought, would understand my condition and probably be enough cooperative to help me recover from the depression; but as things turned out, he maybe understood me, but wasn't that supporting. Maybe because of jealousy that I was mourning so much for _him_ , or because he had given up on me, he just didn't seem to be interested in me anymore.

It was like when finally he had got the opportunity when I had converted from a love triangle back to a love segment and he could easily win over me, he had chosen duty out of his options and quit on love. Now at least if I could even continue a love life with someone else after _him_ , it turned out that Finn wasn't willing for one, and all I knew was that I had to survive being the mentally-retarded and burdened Trylle queen with a slightly scatterbrained husband (though I wasn't much clear-headed either to be making such rude comments about Tove, who had actually been quite a help in this down heartened condition of mine).

Unlike Willa, Finn and Matt, Rhys, Tove and Duncan had been much more understanding, and had probably treated me in such a way that made me feel extremely thankful to those people for doing so. Duncan would be less of a creepy lackey, and would sometimes stay out of my sight when I asked him to; he would understand when I said that I required some solitude, and this was some amazing help from his side.

For the past week, Tove had almost done every king job by himself, requiring the least help from my side – which included the peace treaty between Trylle and Vittra, some other functions and ceremonies, accommodating the other foreign troll guests, controlling of trackers and changelings, etc. and indeed it was a very big help. In fact, he also appointed markis Bain as the new chancellor.

It was only the peace treaty day where I had to make an appearance in public and read out a speech – which was though numb and emotionless, still not terrible. Tove was also the one who had decided that I required a psychiatrist to aid my increasingly terrifying conditions, and when everyone else had agreed with his idea, I was stuck with a psychiatrist coming to meet me occasionally and check on my diet, behavior, mood and physical condition.

At first having the psychiatrist was a real pain in my ass, but then I also began realizing that maybe Willa's plan could also work – if on a much lower scale. Maybe if I managed to keep myself engaged in some queen's work instead of some Willa stuff, I might actually start recovering from my depressive states, and gradually _he_ wouldn't torment me to such an extent anymore.

My expectations were pretty high, but at least I made some slight efforts to participate as the Trylle queen and not act like some disappeared case (the common Trylle weren't very well aware of my psychopathic instability). I decided to get on to typing invites for the Kanin and the Omte for Elora's funeral, customize the funeral decorations like the types of flowers, décor, coffin and gravestone.

For one and a half day, I actually did quite well; my psychiatrist seemed pleased with my efforts, Tove was happy to have back someone to help him in the official ruling stuff, Matt was literally crying seeing my recovery, and Willa went around overreacting too much at my work (which the psychiatrist put a stop at, saying that she was being too insensitive and that I might feel self-conscious to her reactions).

But once when Elora's former assistant Joss (currently my personal secretary) was reading out to me the list of people whose' funeral is to be held just two days after Elora's one, and she read out _his_ name, and that set me out of control. I had immediately run to the bathroom and sank to the floor, clutching my temples, and trying to excrete out vomit even when there was nothing left in my loose organ sack of a stomach.

I had stayed that way for about two more hours, torturing myself at just hearing his name, and then finally exited somewhere late night. My conditions had worsened after my improvement after this incident, but then the psychiatrist probably spread a word to everyone not to mention some particular things in front of me and not to act weirdly in front of me, so after some more days when I finally decided that I couldn't skip Elora's funeral, I realized that no one was in the verge of mentioning the unmentionable _him_.

The funeral went quite well, if I didn't know better. We had all gathered in some large open garden, that had been decorated with artistic pillars that hoisted white roses (ultimately that was the floral décor I had decided for her funeral, thinking they'd look good with the faint snow). I knew it was Elora's funeral, but somehow I couldn't get my mind off _him_ ; even during the sermons, the crying part, the high-tea, I remained silent and numb.

I must have cried, but hardly realized that I did; my body was too much in the depth of different kinds of thoughts, and it was only when Willa came up to embrace me in a hug, that I realized that some tears had trickled down my face.

There were the Kanin and the Omte troll tribes, whom I had to admit were quite different from the Trylle, though they still were trolls. I had to address the foreign trolls with a speech, which I did properly, and had another speech to give being Elora's daughter and successor to the throne, which I thought would have had more effect if I showed some vocal emotion and started sniffing and sobbing while talking about her.

Inside the mansion, there were snacks and beverages being served, and though I was not interested in one, Tove whispered in my ear, saying not to stand there in front of everyone blunt and emotionless, and that I either have some food, talk to some people or do anything.

On his advice, I took some wine and went around, pretending to drink from the glass. I expected the people around me to be a blur, but I could clearly see each face. I noticed Kenna, the marksinna from Oslinna who had called us for help when I and some others had gone to Oslinna for recovery. She smiled at me, first excitedly and then turned meeker, thinking that this was a sad funeral and she shouldn't be smiling.

I just looked at her, and without a nod or smile, went away to wander around Elora's coffin; but Kenna caught up with me some seconds later, with a man and a woman along with her.

"Your majesty," said Kenna, trying not to sound too smiley or excited. "These are the rulers of Oslinna."

The man and woman both bowed, and the male took my hand and kissed it. I flinched, trying not to let the different other memories of kisses haunt me at this important moment.

The man spoke "It is indeed a privilege to meet someone as great and as powerful as you, who has assassinated the last pure-blooded Vittra, and brought both our compounds – Forening and Oslinna – into safety."

I nodded, and said due to politeness and a good impression. "My pleasure."

The woman smiled a little, and said "Your Majesty, we have got a gift for you, which we hope you would find valuable."

"Of course" I almost mumbled.

The man presented a small gift box, wrapped neatly in a white paper, and further decorated with gold ribbons, whose ends fell down in curls. "It is a bracelet that has been charmed with psychologically healing qualities. It is different from physically healing from wounds and injuries, since this can heal your brain when under instability, pressure, tension or used to heal the aftermath of using too much of your Trylle abilities."

At first I raged up slightly, wondering if someone had spread my instability rumors up to such an extent that even the Oslinna rulers were gifting me things to recover from my depression. But after his next sentences, I understood what he meant.

"The most common use of this comes when the brain gets affected and disturbed due to the excess usage of the Trylle abilities, and at that point, this bracelet can be used to heal the brain. Mind you, Your Majesty, this doesn't heal the body, but the brain. You can use this bracelet as a supernatural drug when trying to calm your brain from its disturbances."

"How did you know so much about the bracelet?" I asked rather stupidly. I was a bit disappointed, learning that I could only heal my brain and not someone else's death using this gift, but maybe people would have lesser problems if I stabled back again rather than I made someone rise from the death.

"I made it." the man seemed proud. "My talents work in a way that I can psychologically make people calmer and heal their brain when they are disturbed, unstable or unsettled. Transferring these Trylle qualities to a simple ornament and presenting it to you would be a very hand-made gift from my side, in order to thank you for being such a help to both Oslinna and the Trylle."

"I appreciate your concern for coming to attend my mother's funeral and gifting me something so beautiful. It's an honor."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Five

Newcomer

Two months passed, and early traces of warm days seemed to arrive in the end of March. The snow had almost all melted away, the Mississippi river was now backing in its liquid form again, and trees had started growing their leaves. The Secret Garden seemed to however shown no change in season, and no matter whether dead winter or early spring, it was still flowering with all sorts of beautiful things.

However, like Finn had first said to me when we had first visited the Secret Garden, it was looking in its best in the spring season, with dandelion seeds blowing around in the warm summer air.

Like everything newly blossomed and nourished around here, the only thing I could keep my mind on was the fact that the fetus in my womb would have also been similar to the other flowers and fruits that were also blooming. After the incident with Willa, I had somehow managed not to pass out then and there at the same moment. Willa had called over a doctor the very next day, and after some checkups, it was clearer than ever that _our_ night in Oslinna had definitely turned out with some big surprises.

I wondered how differently I would have reacted if the circumstances would have been different with _his_ presence; maybe I would have squealed and let our tears of joys, been happy, thrown a party. Now I was all the more in trouble; the little secret between me and _him_ had now been known by all our friends, the psychiatrist and the fertility doctor. And the womb I carried around was also something illegitimate – something that could actually strip me off my title.

Tove had suggested abortion, but I just didn't want to kill the last piece of _him_ ; I didn't want to let go of something that belonged specifically just to _us_ , especially I had to let go of _him_. My idea had been more of me giving birth and then sending off the child as an illegitimate changeling which was not maintained in an official record. At first everyone was obviously against my plan, but then somehow I played out the pathetic-pregnant-girl-under-stress role, and got everyone to agree with me, part-time using persuasion.

I had to use the bracelet even more excessively after this news, and managed to somehow stay normal. I sometimes wonder how much life would suck without the drug bracelet; thanks to the Oslinna rulers.

Matt had been pretty mad when he had been informed of this news, and so had the manks doctor who had confirmed my pregnancy. But then, who wasn't mad or shocked or appalled that I was actually pregnant; it seemed obvious for everyone to be so, except for Finn whom I presumed wasn't still aware of my pregnancy.

As for Finn, I had not seen him for the past two weeks or so. Not that I was desperately seeking him or something, or so I had assumed when we had stopped having the least interaction after he had 'broken up' with me. But then, I had at least seen him sometimes in a day, and after a continuous series of not seeing him ever, I definitely had some curiosity to know where he could have gone.

"Do you know where Finn has lately been?" I asked Tove one day when he was playing with a Rubik's cube on the bed probably just to exercise his brain, and I was numbly sitting beside him.

"Oh, I didn't tell you, right? He's gone back to his actual tracking job – special royalty case." Said Tove, momentarily distracting himself from his cube to answer me, and then turning back to rotating the cube.

"Some markis or marksinna, I guess?"

"Marksinna. He's tracking my sister." That irked my attention, catching me off guard.

I didn't have the bracelet healing me (three months' time was good to heal me a slight bit so that I was now numb instead of destructive), so normally it was my nature to not speak much. But this strange thing about his sibling was actually a huge surprise. "You never told me that you even had a sister."

"How am I myself supposed to know? I spent ninety percent of my life living with people who ultimately turned out to _not_ be my parents, and just spent a year here. And well, even my mother didn't know much about my sister except that we had an age difference of three years and was sent off to Florida."

"Well, the average age for Trylle returning back to Forening is nineteen; I mean, you and Willa both returned here at that age. I was being stalked by the Vittra so I returned at seventeen. Why is she coming back at . . . _sixteen_?"

"Well, according to what Finn has assumed after tracking her is that she has some ability which is attracting a lot of public attention towards her. Probably she is admitted in some psychiatric hospital and has neurosurgeons and genetic specialists trying to determine the reasons behind her strange abilities. Well, so Finn is planning to get her home as quickly as possible."

I nodded. "So, when is she supposed to come back?" I was expecting and dreading another debutante ball, dinner with the Kroners, training Tove's sisters if our abilities matched (though that's not very likely since I am already bearing an emotional instability, plus being the queen doesn't leave me with free time to train sixteen-year-olds).

Maybe Willa could do better as an entertainer than I would be capable of, especially in my psychotic condition. And maybe Rhys and Rhiannon too, since they had the most of the free time they could spare for people like Tove's sister.

"Sometime in this week itself, I guess. My manks is choosing decorations for her room and Matt is being a help too in decorating her room. Willa and Rhiannon are probably setting up her closet and bathroom accessories. They'd be finished by tomorrow, and we anyways have enough time to prepare for the christening and the debutante ball."

'Something in this week itself' meant five more days out of which Tove's sister could arrive any day. But it was indeed surprising for both Tove and me when she arrived just the day after we had been talking about his sister. She was taken to Tove's mansion instead of Elora's one, but Tove had gone to have a look at his sister during the day, and introduce himself as her brother.

The very next day she was coming to the mansion for lunch, and to make a better presentation, Tove had asked me to wear my bracelet during our meeting. I was in a navy evening dress that had a wide neckline, showing off my collar bones, and my hair was left down in its wilderness. Tove matched his outfit with mine, choosing a navy dress shirt and slacks, and after both of us were presentable, we went down the stairs to the drawing room where Tove's sister would be arriving in some time (her name is Iris, Tove had said).

The Storms also arrived – Willa in all ruffles, and Garrett wearing a smaller bandage over his leg than he had during the funeral (thankfully, not on a wheelchair, since his wheelchair gave me the creeps). Both of them regarded me with a hug, and Willa whispered over my ear "You've got your drug bracelet, right?" and I nodded.

That was what she had named my bracelet since she thought it worked too much like a drug. Everyone had given me guidelines, telling me not to be too serene and numb, and instead have a mood that would make Iris comfortable (Tove had said that she was pretty insensitive and talkative).

Iris came along with Noah and Aurora Kroner, and another middle-aged Markis friend of the Kroners in a posh white Mercedes, and all of us had gone over to greet her outside in the gates. She looked too young to be sixteen (more like she was fourteen), but had the height of a sixteen-year-old. Iris's eyes were large and the same shade of mossy green like Tove's and there was a faint tone of green on her skin.

She was in a light olive gown with a plunging neckline, and her hair was done in an actually pretty awesome messy bun, which made me jealous of the failure buns I had always made before Finn had made me convert into leaving my hair down. She bowed, and then we walked to the drawing room, where Iris was pretty hesitant in taking her seat on a couch.

"So, Iris, how are you adjusting here, in Forening?" I asked, settling down on a loveseat with Tove.

"Well, everything is really so different here; in both good and bad ways of course. First of all I – for the first time ever – feel ever so normal, like, yes, even I have someone in the world who is like me; actually, that I have an entire city in this world filled with people like me. And then, here I don't feel all discriminated because I spent days in a mental asylum, am prone to have some psychotic illness, see weird things that others don't see, etc. because here everyone is like me.

"Also, it's so good to have a brother here, since in the real world I was the only child, and well, I wanted a pet dog or a hamster to give me some company, but when I began seeing things and hearing voices and all that, it turned out that my parents won't actually approve of a loony child with a pet animal. Though it definitely is weird to have a brother of only nineteen whose already married to someone – well my dad married when he was around thirty five so I had ever since been taught that every person is wed at thirty five, and well, my bro is so fucking famous around here. I mean, he's the king, and being one has to mean that you are famous and well-known by everyone in your country and amongst others of your kinds – all trolls, by which I mean. Not knowing him is like not knowing whose' the American president, and well, being his sister, it's like a seriously massive progress to being famous around neurosurgeons to being famous around mythical creatures."

Iris was speaking so increasingly fast that it was hard to keep up with her words. Also she bubbled with excitement and I literally held my breath, trying to calculate if I would be able to speak as long as she did, while she spoke. I could bet no one even noticed when she swore in a royal household.

"Well, in this case, it turns out that the queen is more famous than the king." Said Tove.

"Well, but most people are sexists in their own ways, and half of the time, they would only give their respects to the king in their assumptions that he is stronger, mightier and more intimidating. And well, the queen is judged to be more of a shy, sensitive person ruled by the intimidation of the king. No offense thought, but that's how things are in a royal household; well, unless it's a love marriage, which is the most unlikely since people tend to fall in love in tricky ways. And well, the queen can too be pretty kickass, only to be veiled by the king's power and intimidation and all that I-am-the-legendary crap."

I flinched, thinking that she was in a way right; not about my and Tove's case, but about Sara and Oren's case, where the king is a strong and feared personality who controls the soft-spoken queen like his puppet. Also, I wondered what type of a person Sara would have been like when not under Oren's I-am-the-legendary crap; maybe she also had the potential of being a cool and badass queen.

Iris continued "Well, yeah, as a continuation to the answer of your question, things are better here since I get to live in a proper house – which I have to say is the best house I could have ever had, well, except that my brother's house is much better; I mean, if my troll home is an Edwardian, then this is Buckingham palace. Seriously, it's that good. Sorry, I'm getting distracted; and well, my house is about ten thousand times better than that mental hospital which reeked twenty four into seven of chlorine.

"Then, in some ways its confusing since I don't get a single word of the hierarchy and the monarchy system Finn tried to explain to me; don't worry dude, you could have another go and maybe you'll get lucky if I understand. And then there are some things here that are down-most ridiculous and make no sense to me. I mean, even with you family – which means that you are in your most casual mode and can say anything write from which guy you're dating to if you failed in Optics – here we've got to have respectable manners and good looks.

"Then – continuing about ridiculous things – here is something that I have to say is better out there in the human world; clothing styles. I mean, for men its cool – all jeans, coats, hoodies, jackets, maybe in the upcoming summer season I might get to have a sneak-peek at some real-life, hot muscled, shirtless men, but women . . . god, I feel like this is like the worst means of sexism. I mean, do you necessarily have to wear a gown, because I could literally escape this place to get into somewhere where trolls can be allowed to wear tank tops and pencil skirts.

"Well, thankfully, not all gowns here are those ridiculous medieval gowns where you put some wired ring under your skirt that gives you the most extra-large ass ever, otherwise I would actually have run back to my mental asylum for them to finish my upcoming surgery. And then another 'thank-god-its-not-like-that-here' is that men don't get to wear those wigs where you have greyed hair all slicked back and then sprouting out in the most insanely tight ringlets. You know, the Benjamin Franklin hairstyle. Because the first when I had a look at Tove I really thought he may get his hair curled during balls in those weird ringlets and dye them this meager grey color.

"And well, as for my family, my mom is a bit intimidating for sure, but at least she doesn't force me into seven hours mental therapy or go to the bar to meet manwhores after abandoning me in the hospital (was it true that Iris's host mom went to meet up with manwhores and cheated on her dad). My dad is, like, pretty good-looking as compared to my previous dad because he looked more like an active granddad and all my friends used to stare at him like 'is that really your dad?' and I seriously used to be like 'no, he's just an uncle'. I mean, if I tried to imagine what my friends' reaction would be seeing me with such a hot dad, it's like when you have a dad like him, you always wanna hang around with him because he's so much of the showing off kind."

Iris seriously didn't seem to care whom she was around or what the others might be thinking about her from her words. She just kept on talking really fast and entertaining everyone else with all she had to say about each thing.

I remember if someone would have asked me the same question during my meeting with the Kroners and the Stroms, I would just have said one sentence or so. But here, Iris would start talking about whatever she felt like about the subject. I wondered what would have been the consequences if I would've done the same thing on the day of my dinner with the Storms and the Kroners. Elora would've probably murdered me that very night.

At times I could see Aurora passing dirty looks on to her daughter, but then I realized that Noah and the others were quite enjoying her talks. When the markis Aurora had brought along started talking about the election for the new chancellor, Iris started talking about how there was already a king and a queen, and that there seemed to be no need of a chancellor anymore, even though according to what presumed she didn't quite understand what we were talking about.

Iris talked about her friends, mentioning her and Tove's manks, Tove and Willa, talking especially fondly about Willa, saying how much she had helped her in the choice of fashion and clothes, and how cooperative and friendly the two mankslig had been. Also Finn was there in her list of friends, and Iris went on and on about her different illusions she had had about Finn; first a hot-looking freshman in some college who was her neighbor, then somewhat like a friendly neighbor, then some friend who completely understood her and went to visit her during her hospital days, and then finally as a Trylle tracker who had come to take her back to the world she actually belonged to.

The way she spoke about Finn looked forward to make me jealous, but I refused to let it win over my own self who had decided that now I couldn't have any love life and had to continue my entire life as the pathetic and illegally pregnant Trylle queen.

I didn't realize how much time had passed away with Iris chattering away to her heart' content, and suddenly Finn just appeared at the doorway, announcing that it was time to eat right now. That was when everyone got up, and started moving towards the dining hall, where the table was laid with elaborate cutlery. Iris gasped and commented a lot about every single detail in the dining hall, and it turned out that I was starting to get pretty annoyed with the constant chatting.

During lunch, she began her huge conversational topic about how she had never actually eaten anything orally – or she had, but like most Trylle been choosy in her meals – and had ever since been skinny and fussy about food. That was when pediatricians and surgeons had nutritioned her through other means, by directly inserting syringes of various nutritional factors and drugs into her blood vessels.

After lunch, we went back to the drawing room, where I mostly tuned off whatever was being talked about by the different people. I was almost relieved when Iris and the others started leaving my mansion, and I realized that somewhere in between, I had slipped off my healing bracelet while fiddling with it; maybe that was why I was getting so irate.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Newcomer

Two months passed, and early traces of warm days seemed to arrive in the end of March. The snow had almost all melted away, the Mississippi river was now backing in its liquid form again, and trees had started growing their leaves. The Secret Garden seemed to however shown no change in season, and no matter whether dead winter or early spring, it was still flowering with all sorts of beautiful things.

However, like Finn had first said to me when we had first visited the Secret Garden, it was looking in its best in the spring season, with dandelion seeds blowing around in the warm summer air.

Like everything newly blossomed and nourished around here, the only thing I could keep my mind on was the fact that the fetus in my womb would have also been similar to the other flowers and fruits that were also blooming. After the incident with Willa, I had somehow managed not to pass out then and there at the same moment. Willa had called over a doctor the very next day, and after some checkups, it was clearer than ever that _our_ night in Oslinna had definitely turned out with some big surprises.

I wondered how differently I would have reacted if the circumstances would have been different with _his_ presence; maybe I would have squealed and let our tears of joys, been happy, thrown a party. Now I was all the more in trouble; the little secret between me and _him_ had now been known by all our friends, the psychiatrist and the fertility doctor. And the womb I carried around was also something illegitimate – something that could actually strip me off my title.

Tove had suggested abortion, but I just didn't want to kill the last piece of _him_ ; I didn't want to let go of something that belonged specifically just to _us_ , especially I had to let go of _him_. My idea had been more of me giving birth and then sending off the child as an illegitimate changeling which was not maintained in an official record. At first everyone was obviously against my plan, but then somehow I played out the pathetic-pregnant-girl-under-stress role, and got everyone to agree with me, part-time using persuasion.

I had to use the bracelet even more excessively after this news, and managed to somehow stay normal. I sometimes wonder how much life would suck without the drug bracelet; thanks to the Oslinna rulers.

Matt had been pretty mad when he had been informed of this news, and so had the manks doctor who had confirmed my pregnancy. But then, who wasn't mad or shocked or appalled that I was actually pregnant; it seemed obvious for everyone to be so, except for Finn whom I presumed wasn't still aware of my pregnancy.

As for Finn, I had not seen him for the past two weeks or so. Not that I was desperately seeking him or something, or so I had assumed when we had stopped having the least interaction after he had 'broken up' with me. But then, I had at least seen him sometimes in a day, and after a continuous series of not seeing him ever, I definitely had some curiosity to know where he could have gone.

"Do you know where Finn has lately been?" I asked Tove one day when he was playing with a Rubik's cube on the bed probably just to exercise his brain, and I was numbly sitting beside him.

"Oh, I didn't tell you, right? He's gone back to his actual tracking job – special royalty case." Said Tove, momentarily distracting himself from his cube to answer me, and then turning back to rotating the cube.

"Some markis or marksinna, I guess?"

"Marksinna. He's tracking my sister." That irked my attention, catching me off guard.

I didn't have the bracelet healing me (three months' time was good to heal me a slight bit so that I was now numb instead of destructive), so normally it was my nature to not speak much. But this strange thing about his sibling was actually a huge surprise. "You never told me that you even had a sister."

"How am I myself supposed to know? I spent ninety percent of my life living with people who ultimately turned out to _not_ be my parents, and just spent a year here. And well, even my mother didn't know much about my sister except that we had an age difference of three years and was sent off to Florida."

"Well, the average age for Trylle returning back to Forening is nineteen; I mean, you and Willa both returned here at that age. I was being stalked by the Vittra so I returned at seventeen. Why is she coming back at . . . _sixteen_?"

"Well, according to what Finn has assumed after tracking her is that she has some ability which is attracting a lot of public attention towards her. Probably she is admitted in some psychiatric hospital and has neurosurgeons and genetic specialists trying to determine the reasons behind her strange abilities. Well, so Finn is planning to get her home as quickly as possible."

I nodded. "So, when is she supposed to come back?" I was expecting and dreading another debutante ball, dinner with the Kroners, training Tove's sisters if our abilities matched (though that's not very likely since I am already bearing an emotional instability, plus being the queen doesn't leave me with free time to train sixteen-year-olds).

Maybe Willa could do better as an entertainer than I would be capable of, especially in my psychotic condition. And maybe Rhys and Rhiannon too, since they had the most of the free time they could spare for people like Tove's sister.

"Sometime in this week itself, I guess. My manks is choosing decorations for her room and Matt is being a help too in decorating her room. Willa and Rhiannon are probably setting up her closet and bathroom accessories. They'd be finished by tomorrow, and we anyways have enough time to prepare for the christening and the debutante ball."

'Something in this week itself' meant five more days out of which Tove's sister could arrive any day. But it was indeed surprising for both Tove and me when she arrived just the day after we had been talking about his sister. She was taken to Tove's mansion instead of Elora's one, but Tove had gone to have a look at his sister during the day, and introduce himself as her brother.

The very next day she was coming to the mansion for lunch, and to make a better presentation, Tove had asked me to wear my bracelet during our meeting. I was in a navy evening dress that had a wide neckline, showing off my collar bones, and my hair was left down in its wilderness. Tove matched his outfit with mine, choosing a navy dress shirt and slacks, and after both of us were presentable, we went down the stairs to the drawing room where Tove's sister would be arriving in some time (her name is Iris, Tove had said).

The Storms also arrived – Willa in all ruffles, and Garrett wearing a smaller bandage over his leg than he had during the funeral (thankfully, not on a wheelchair, since his wheelchair gave me the creeps). Both of them regarded me with a hug, and Willa whispered over my ear "You've got your drug bracelet, right?" and I nodded.

That was what she had named my bracelet since she thought it worked too much like a drug. Everyone had given me guidelines, telling me not to be too serene and numb, and instead have a mood that would make Iris comfortable (Tove had said that she was pretty insensitive and talkative).

Iris came along with Noah and Aurora Kroner, and another middle-aged Markis friend of the Kroners in a posh white Mercedes, and all of us had gone over to greet her outside in the gates. She looked too young to be sixteen (more like she was fourteen), but had the height of a sixteen-year-old. Iris's eyes were large and the same shade of mossy green like Tove's and there was a faint tone of green on her skin.

She was in a light olive gown with a plunging neckline, and her hair was done in an actually pretty awesome messy bun, which made me jealous of the failure buns I had always made before Finn had made me convert into leaving my hair down. She bowed, and then we walked to the drawing room, where Iris was pretty hesitant in taking her seat on a couch.

"So, Iris, how are you adjusting here, in Forening?" I asked, settling down on a loveseat with Tove.

"Well, everything is really so different here; in both good and bad ways of course. First of all I – for the first time ever – feel ever so normal, like, yes, even I have someone in the world who is like me; actually, that I have an entire city in this world filled with people like me. And then, here I don't feel all discriminated because I spent days in a mental asylum, am prone to have some psychotic illness, see weird things that others don't see, etc. because here everyone is like me.

"Also, it's so good to have a brother here, since in the real world I was the only child, and well, I wanted a pet dog or a hamster to give me some company, but when I began seeing things and hearing voices and all that, it turned out that my parents won't actually approve of a loony child with a pet animal. Though it definitely is weird to have a brother of only nineteen whose already married to someone – well my dad married when he was around thirty five so I had ever since been taught that every person is wed at thirty five, and well, my bro is so fucking famous around here. I mean, he's the king, and being one has to mean that you are famous and well-known by everyone in your country and amongst others of your kinds – all trolls, by which I mean. Not knowing him is like not knowing whose' the American president, and well, being his sister, it's like a seriously massive progress to being famous around neurosurgeons to being famous around mythical creatures."

Iris was speaking so increasingly fast that it was hard to keep up with her words. Also she bubbled with excitement and I literally held my breath, trying to calculate if I would be able to speak as long as she did, while she spoke. I could bet no one even noticed when she swore in a royal household.

"Well, in this case, it turns out that the queen is more famous than the king." Said Tove.

"Well, but most people are sexists in their own ways, and half of the time, they would only give their respects to the king in their assumptions that he is stronger, mightier and more intimidating. And well, the queen is judged to be more of a shy, sensitive person ruled by the intimidation of the king. No offense thought, but that's how things are in a royal household; well, unless it's a love marriage, which is the most unlikely since people tend to fall in love in tricky ways. And well, the queen can too be pretty kickass, only to be veiled by the king's power and intimidation and all that I-am-the-legendary crap."

I flinched, thinking that she was in a way right; not about my and Tove's case, but about Sara and Oren's case, where the king is a strong and feared personality who controls the soft-spoken queen like his puppet. Also, I wondered what type of a person Sara would have been like when not under Oren's I-am-the-legendary crap; maybe she also had the potential of being a cool and badass queen.

Iris continued "Well, yeah, as a continuation to the answer of your question, things are better here since I get to live in a proper house – which I have to say is the best house I could have ever had, well, except that my brother's house is much better; I mean, if my troll home is an Edwardian, then this is Buckingham palace. Seriously, it's that good. Sorry, I'm getting distracted; and well, my house is about ten thousand times better than that mental hospital which reeked twenty four into seven of chlorine.

"Then, in some ways its confusing since I don't get a single word of the hierarchy and the monarchy system Finn tried to explain to me; don't worry dude, you could have another go and maybe you'll get lucky if I understand. And then there are some things here that are down-most ridiculous and make no sense to me. I mean, even with you family – which means that you are in your most casual mode and can say anything write from which guy you're dating to if you failed in Optics – here we've got to have respectable manners and good looks.

"Then – continuing about ridiculous things – here is something that I have to say is better out there in the human world; clothing styles. I mean, for men its cool – all jeans, coats, hoodies, jackets, maybe in the upcoming summer season I might get to have a sneak-peek at some real-life, hot muscled, shirtless men, but women . . . god, I feel like this is like the worst means of sexism. I mean, do you necessarily have to wear a gown, because I could literally escape this place to get into somewhere where trolls can be allowed to wear tank tops and pencil skirts.

"Well, thankfully, not all gowns here are those ridiculous medieval gowns where you put some wired ring under your skirt that gives you the most extra-large ass ever, otherwise I would actually have run back to my mental asylum for them to finish my upcoming surgery. And then another 'thank-god-its-not-like-that-here' is that men don't get to wear those wigs where you have greyed hair all slicked back and then sprouting out in the most insanely tight ringlets. You know, the Benjamin Franklin hairstyle. Because the first when I had a look at Tove I really thought he may get his hair curled during balls in those weird ringlets and dye them this meager grey color.

"And well, as for my family, my mom is a bit intimidating for sure, but at least she doesn't force me into seven hours mental therapy or go to the bar to meet manwhores after abandoning me in the hospital (was it true that Iris's host mom went to meet up with manwhores and cheated on her dad). My dad is, like, pretty good-looking as compared to my previous dad because he looked more like an active granddad and all my friends used to stare at him like 'is that really your dad?' and I seriously used to be like 'no, he's just an uncle'. I mean, if I tried to imagine what my friends' reaction would be seeing me with such a hot dad, it's like when you have a dad like him, you always wanna hang around with him because he's so much of the showing off kind."

Iris seriously didn't seem to care whom she was around or what the others might be thinking about her from her words. She just kept on talking really fast and entertaining everyone else with all she had to say about each thing.

I remember if someone would have asked me the same question during my meeting with the Kroners and the Stroms, I would just have said one sentence or so. But here, Iris would start talking about whatever she felt like about the subject. I wondered what would have been the consequences if I would've done the same thing on the day of my dinner with the Storms and the Kroners. Elora would've probably murdered me that very night.

At times I could see Aurora passing dirty looks on to her daughter, but then I realized that Noah and the others were quite enjoying her talks. When the markis Aurora had brought along started talking about the election for the new chancellor, Iris started talking about how there was already a king and a queen, and that there seemed to be no need of a chancellor anymore, even though according to what presumed she didn't quite understand what we were talking about.

Iris talked about her friends, mentioning her and Tove's manks, Tove and Willa, talking especially fondly about Willa, saying how much she had helped her in the choice of fashion and clothes, and how cooperative and friendly the two mankslig had been. Also Finn was there in her list of friends, and Iris went on and on about her different illusions she had had about Finn; first a hot-looking freshman in some college who was her neighbor, then somewhat like a friendly neighbor, then some friend who completely understood her and went to visit her during her hospital days, and then finally as a Trylle tracker who had come to take her back to the world she actually belonged to.

The way she spoke about Finn looked forward to make me jealous, but I refused to let it win over my own self who had decided that now I couldn't have any love life and had to continue my entire life as the pathetic and illegally pregnant Trylle queen.

I didn't realize how much time had passed away with Iris chattering away to her heart' content, and suddenly Finn just appeared at the doorway, announcing that it was time to eat right now. That was when everyone got up, and started moving towards the dining hall, where the table was laid with elaborate cutlery. Iris gasped and commented a lot about every single detail in the dining hall, and it turned out that I was starting to get pretty annoyed with the constant chatting.

During lunch, she began her huge conversational topic about how she had never actually eaten anything orally – or she had, but like most Trylle been choosy in her meals – and had ever since been skinny and fussy about food. That was when pediatricians and surgeons had nutritioned her through other means, by directly inserting syringes of various nutritional factors and drugs into her blood vessels.

After lunch, we went back to the drawing room, where I mostly tuned off whatever was being talked about by the different people. I was almost relieved when Iris and the others started leaving my mansion, and I realized that somewhere in between, I had slipped off my healing bracelet while fiddling with it; maybe that was why I was getting so irate.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Iris

After the treaty with the Vittra, we had almost-friendly exchange and visits almost every month in each other's compounds. The royals – including the rulers, markises and marksinnas – were already in peaceful and friendly terms with the Vittra (especially me and Sara), but the ordinary Trylle and trackers still were developing in their relationship with the fellow Vittra commoners and trackers.

Information about each other was often let out, though not very secretive ones. It was like as if the Vittra and the trylle were finally getting to turn into more than pure enemies. Our relationship bettered when Sara lent us some help to give humans delusions about Iris's strange and inhuman case.

Iris was also gaining increasing fame around everywhere. Before her debutante ball, she had come over to the palace many times (in fact almost stayed there the entire time) and had interacted a lot with almost everyone, and unsurprisingly everyone had also been pretty interested in her strangely interesting stories among the humans. Rhys and Rhiannon also accepted Iris as one of their limited friends, though Iris started having some awkward moments in between Rhys and Rhiannon's romance.

Willa and Iris also got along well with their choices for fashion, and she was a major help in choosing Iris all her dresses, jewelry and accessories, even though I was very sure she already had enough of such stuff in her room, being a marksinna. Finn was her tracker, and though her official home was the Kroners' place, Iris insisted that the palace was better, and Finn didn't disagree since he thought this was the place where all the tapestry, family trees traced back to centuries, books on everything that she needed to learn, etc. would be in their best.

It was a little awkward seeing Finn and Iris together, with Finn explaining stuff in his usual calm and emotionless voice, while Iris chattering her head off, and I wondered if I was jealous or not. Maybe not, I guessed; I was anyway not supposed to care about what he did or with which girl he roamed around. He would soon understand – maybe he already did – that he couldn't get along with another marksinna, especially the king's sister.

Iris spent a lot of time in the Secret Garden, and I wondered when she was there with Finn, would he also flirt with her by the same comment he had used when he had first introduced me to the Secret Garden _"though it's not as beautiful when you're not around"_. But then, I didn't honestly care anymore, being well aware of the fact that now that I was already pregnant with someone and married to someone else, I didn't need a third person in all this.

Also with the developing friendship between the Trylle and Vittra, it was surprising when Tove once started talking about Iris's Vittra friends – the Vittra, who didn't follow the traditional system of changelings, had people closer to her age than the Trylle did, and occasionally some came here at Forening to visit Iris or Iris didn't even mind a trip to Ondarike.

I – as the queen – was also supposed to spend some of my time trying to educate her, and well, if I didn't know better, it was irritating explaining a short paragraph and getting a whole page worthy of words from her mouth in return. Once when Finn was walking in front of me (which made the scene all the more self-conscious and awkward) and Duncan behind me, I blurted out without thinking "Iris is so much like Tove, both of them had this feeling with the humans that they were going crazy."

Tove had told me sometime before that when he had been in the human world, he had seen people's auras involuntarily, been able to move stuff using his not-so-matured telekinesis, and had thought he had actually gone crazy. And so, when Finn had come to take him back to Forening, he had been relieved and had effortlessly accepted his chance to live a life where he wasn't all that crazy.

Iris had also been assumed to have some very unusual and creepy psychiatric problem. The only difference was that while Tove had not done much about his mental health except been worried, Iris's host parents had got her into a mental asylum where she had been observed, nutritioned through the blood vessels since due to her Trylle peculiarities she wouldn't eat like humans would, operated and been counseled.

"Well, she's made up of the same blood as Tove is, so it isn't supposed to weird out any of us when she turns out entirely like Tove." Finn wasn't expecting me to ask anything, but didn't not answer.

"But, then why did Tove get here at nineteen and she's here at sixteen? Especially when there was more danger during Tove's arrival with the Vittra than it is now?"

"The Kroners' have this blood thing – also the fact that they are green-toned – that their abilities are quite precious to the Trylle communities and there is a high chance that they would have more than just one ability. However this multiple and more advanced ability quality about them often reveals them to the humans as someone not exactly of the same genes.

"Tove saw auras around people's heads, heard strange noises that other humans couldn't hear, and could move things without using any physical strength, and he thought that all these things were driving him crazy. Only, he kept it more secretive than Iris had managed, but then what do you expect out of a talkative teenager who would word-vomit almost everything she has inside her brain to anyone.

"We were close to revealing the humans about our existence, only both me and Tove got lucky when I rescued him back here to Forening. And after that, we had some reason after stalking Iris through our network of changelings that she might be creating some unneeded attention towards us from the humans. And well, it turned out that we were quite right, so I got her back to Forening at this early age. Though that doesn't change the date of her debutante ball."

I nodded, though I doubt he had even seen me nod. The next few days continue like that; I hadn't noticed how much of the power I had consumed of my bracelet, until once I checked the surface and realized that about only one fourth of the smooth shiny part was left. From then onwards I started limiting usage of the drug bracelet, and hoped I could carry on like this.

Apparently Iris was given a time of about two and a half weeks to learn more about the trolls before her ball, and I felt kind of jealous knowing that while I had been struggling with just a few days before I mastered everything from a waltz to how the Trylle society worked, Iris comfortably spent her days.

She also had this markis who had come to have lunch in the mansion along with the Kroners, who would be her official trainer. Their talents weren't exactly the same, but in a way matched with each other, so he could easily explain all about it; or so I had assumed.

It was one night when I was probably feeling too claustrophobic to be able to sleep, so I just got up and went around in the palace corridors and hallways. I was practically naked in just a long satin housecoat, but didn't care since no one except some scheduled on the night guard would be awake, and most would be outside the mansion instead of inside it.

I wandered around for some time and then went up to a room that had a nice looking bed. Belatedly I realized that this was the very room Elora had stayed in when me and Tove had moved in to her enormous room. I didn't even bother to switch on the lights, and simply went in and crouched beside the bed lamp, lost in the memories of my mother. It was indeed sad that she had to be my mother for such a short time, when ironically she had been for eighteen years. But then a mother for just eighteen years also wasn't much of a very good record.

That was when I realized at hearing light whispers and laughing sounds that I was not alone in the room. I whipped back and saw a dark figure near the glass wall of the room. Judging from the loose strands coming out of the bun, it was a female, and based upon the body size, she wasn't very old. I got up and went towards whoever was there, and then noticed that the person was Iris.

She seemed to be sentimentally happy – smiling sadly at something I couldn't see – and was babbling something along with pauses, as if she too was listening to something else. "What the hell are _you_ doing here?" I said, startling her.

Iris's instant reaction was to spin at my direction (I couldn't believe she actually didn't hear me enter), but after that she didn't say anything and just whispered "She's here; Wendy. I mean, I know I shouldn't call her Wendy, she's the queen afterall, but well, it's just so frustrating learning the entire name Wendy Luella Kroner nee Dahl. Oh well, I just learnt it."

For a moment I could just stand there and stare Iris babbling in whispers like an idiot, but then I said "Iris, come back here, whom are you talking to?" I knew it all sounded stupid, but couldn't think of better words to speak of.

"Elora." She said louder (probably in answer of my question) that caught me off guard. She was talking to Elora, and though there was a high chance that maybe she was just imagining things or having weird hallucinations, I still chose to get stunned over the fact that Iris could speak to someone who didn't even exist at the moment.

"How?" my voice made it clear how amazed I was by the idea.

"Well, that's like a really long story, but the night is also supposed to be, like, really long, and since it's clear that both of us are in no hurry to get back to our beds, I don't mind telling you the story. So, it starts as one of the prime reasons as to why my parents – uh, host parents, god I get so confused – sent me to the asylum. It was just that I kept hearing voices that no one else would hear, and they could hear me back too.

"I mean, I didn't always know who the person was, but sometimes I actually did. Whatever, I heard those creepy voices, mostly saying something like 'oh my god, I can't believe I'm actually getting to talk to you' or something like that. I mean, like, first those weirdoes themselves put in their mouthpieces in my earlobes and now they come all over like they are so amazed by me and can't believe that I actually exist.

"I mean, I could go snap directly at their faces that I don't believe that I'm getting to be the _lucky_ one who gets chosen to hear all this trash that you're mouth's got to say. Well, and these people can also probably hear me when I whisper, so I would whisper something back to them. Well, it evidently made them happier knowing that I was even capable of speaking something.

"And sometimes maybe if I concentrate really hard, which is not as easy as it looks, though Finn assures me that one day I'll definitely be able to have hours of conversation with such people due to my concentration – okay, so if I concentrate hard and if there is also some cooperation from the other side, I even manage to see hallucinations of the people I'm talking to.

"Well, its creepy, since half the time the people with whom I'm conversing are dead. Okay, that sounds freaky, right; don't blame me, I didn't get to choose my abilities, or else I would have chosen something more pretty like being able to control impossible stuff or hypnotize people with your boobs. Well, I'll tell you how; it was my _host_ grandma's funeral, and well, everyone was crying – except me of course, I would be having a cocktail party after her death – and it was all black people – not the race black, but people who were wearing black.

"And well, suddenly I heard my grandma's voice – her same old squeaky voice – saying something like 'god, you aren't even human Iris, I couldn't believe how my daughter managed to give birth to you'. I mean, could you ever imagine how shocking that would be; just being at someone's funeral, and then hearing the same person speaking something so rude about you. I would have literally been like 'yeah, it finally turns out that you were right, that your daughter had given birth to a much saner person, who had been switched at birth with a bitch like me' right now.

"And then, when we had gone to Rome for some family vacation, I literally got a heart attack hearing Julia Caesaria's voice. I mean, hell, now I've got an ancient princess's voice inside my head. Then, in Washington, we were posing outside the White House and suddenly it was John F. Kennedy who started talking to me. Well, those are just the famous personalities, but all were dead at the time I was hearing them. Weird."

"How did you know it was John F. Kennedy? Or Julius Caesar?" I asked quietly.

"There, there, here comes the confusion between Julius Caesar and Julia Caesaria, she's – that is Julia – is Caesar's daughter. And well, almost every person introduces himself or herself, and though ninety percent I have no idea who is being talked about, ten percent I still manage to know who they are. You know basically almost each conversational script from these dead people comes something like 'okay, so by the way, as you may not know I'm sir ABC and it's indeed a privilege to meet you'. And well, I'd be like, 'thanks very much sir ABC, but I'm not the least privileged having you poking around in my brain'."

"Well, if normally you're angry about hearing other people –"

"Dead people, I'd like to say. I can just talk to dead people. I mean, that way it's not that since I can also talk to _you_ , so you are also a dead personality, it's just that I can speak to people from both sides – dead or alive. What?" she looked at me with my eyes closed in frustration.

Well, I was frustrated at how inconsiderate Iris could be while speaking, but that was when I realized that she could speak to dead people. I didn't know whether I was happy or angry or embarrassed as to why she had learnt many secrets about me or not, but at that moment all I could see or notice was the spark of a hope, even though it wasn't much of a hope.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Abilities

"If normally you are angry about hearing people, why are you looking so happy right now?" I asked, evilly satisfied to have not been interrupted this time.

"Well, here, it's different, because I know what is going to happen – Brian had told me enough about that (so Brian was this markis who trained her), and it's pretty natural for you to go and talk more to these dead hallucinations when you know that they'll be amazed by the one-and-only beauty from earth who has some sort of this psychological contact with them.

"Also, it's so much more easier directly learning about the ancient kings and queens from their own mouths than read texts about them, and part time even wait for Tove or Finn to translate that ancient stuff."

"If you're talking about Tryllic, its medieval stuff." I said, not adding that I too agreed with her that the script of Tryllic was annoyingly tricky to decipher. "And so, you speak to ghosts?"

"That's what Brian had said, that I am kind of like a communication means from both the sides, though I myself belong to the live side. I'm kinda wondering what the consequences would be when I die, because then maybe every one of you living people on earth can hear my voice, or wait, more logical and a further pain in the ass that I'll be hearing all your voices. I mean, that's totally loony. And it's even more painfully annoying to go walking around the entire palace in search of ghost bodies whom I can't even see, but would be able to hear once I'm close enough to them. Though Brian tells me often to just move into my ghost hallucinations mode, where I can both see and hear whatever ghosts are lingering around in the house."

"You know what, I think there are places where the ghost as a living person has been before and probably had good memories, where it will arrive again after death. Maybe that's why you had Julia Caesar in Athens, and you're hearing Elora right now. I don't know about the grandmother though."

"Well, she must have been dying to go to her grave then. Oh my god, people must have got so annoyed with me that they started dreams about beautiful gold-plated coffins and crystal gravestones. Though, I'm not very sure if you can have actual crystal gravestones; I mean, it's a gravestone, not very likely to be made up of something so glassy and breakable. Or maybe, since we're talking about dreams, my host grandma must have found it wonderful, dreaming even about the shittiest graves ever just to get out of the house."

I just shrugged her babbles off, and said "whatever, is Elora still there?"

"Of course, she can read my mind, and now that she knows you're here, she's not gonna move from here. I mean, of course you haven't talked to her for ages, and this might actually be a very good time that you both interact, especially now that you have got the source – that of course appears to be me – to even communicate. I mean, dead people would obviously enjoy the heavenly bliss up there, but there is still some small pleasure in being in contact with a live person, even if that person is some stupid, silly little troll who keeps chattering the shit out of the troll queen and word vomiting stuff without thinking."

"Is there any way I could talk to the people you can talk to?" I asked, wondering some chat with Elora.

"Yes, of course there is. Nothing is impossible, and where there's a fucking will, there's got to be a fucking way too. Oh sorry, no swearing in front of the queen, right. I mean, I kind of forget the rules here. You know, you see a teen king and queen, and even if they were gowns and a crown and go around with a scepter, you would expect them to drink and do drugs and swear and –"

"Iris" I tried unsuccessfully to be as calm as possible. "Let's not drift from the topic; is there any way I could talk to Elora? And by the way, I don't go around carrying a scepter."

"Sorry, whatever. I'll act like a translator – an interpreter, whatever you desire. Take information from this side to that side. Sounds cool, right? You know, I began to feel like my brain is much more effective when it comes to using my abilities, other than when I get to do all that experiments with pH paper and concave lenses."

"Okay, great idea." I hurriedly agreed to her plan, without much thought. "So, what do I do?"

"Well, Queen Elora Dahl – ex-queen, whatever – is right here in this room, and you can say whatever you want to. I mean, not anything, since she'd like polite manners and no-swearing, and I guess it would probably do with a nice 'hello' or something like that. Anyway, I can't advise very well about what she would like, since I know shit about her except that she was your biological mother and the former queen, before you set out ruling Forening. So it's completely your choice."

I felt foolish doing so, but anywyas said to thin air "Elora, are you there?" and then said to Iris "don't babble, just directly say whatever I'm saying to her."

Iris whispered something that sounded like "she's there; Wendy, and she's not yet sure if you're actually there or not." She remained silent for a while, and then said louder "she's there, right here talking to me directly and also to you in a pretty indirect process, though she herself isn't very sure if it is actually possible that the dead can ever have a connection to the live souls. But then she's maybe not all that surprised as a human would have been since she's a Trylle and knows much about our insane Trylle abilities. And then, she's asking how you're doing."

"Well, it's hard to . . . um, explain. Tell her that I'm trying my best, and . . ." it was hard to tell Iris about how things were going on between us. Maybe since Elora was dead and couldn't be brought alive on earth anymore, I could trust her with all the things that had wrecked up my life, but not the immature, talkative girl who had recently arrived to Forening.

"She's saying that it's kind of hard to explain, though don't ask me why, since I'm just as much as confused as you are. Though maybe since you're her mom so you've got somewhat more like a maternal fear, while I'm just dealing with a mere eyebrow-raise type of confusion as to what she means by that." said Iris, and heard for a long time, before whispering back "it's not possible. I mean, of course it must be, but I don't know how to. It's kinda advanced and I'm not yet taught how to do that till now –"

I cleared my throat loudly for her to get her attention back on me. "I guess even I deserve to know what conversation is going on between you and my mother."

"Well, Elora was saying that maybe you have something personal things to discuss with her that maybe you won't trust _me_ with. Don't look at me like that; there is a strong chance that it is true that you don't trust me with whatever you've got to tell her. Or maybe you don't trust Elora too, but then she can't do anything with whatever you've got to say about yourself, so maybe you do trust her with that, but not me, because I'm well and alive and have the capability to do every thing about whatever you've probably got to say.

"Yah, so she was asking me for a way where you two – which means you and Elora – can chat in a more direct way. You know, like, face to face, and most preferably without my ears interrupting your mother-to-the-daughter conversation –"

"Well, that's an excellent idea. Can you do something to make it that way?" I cut short in her speech.

"Um – Brian was telling me about some way where we have some physical contact and then we both concentrate a lot and yield some kind of a psychokinetic power that connects you to the dead people that I can see. I mean, it's not just you, but anyone else who can yield mental telekinesis stuff. But well, it's too advanced for me to learn at this stage; maybe it is going to be done after the debutante ball. Well, the way is just brilliant – I mean, you being able to see, hear and communicate with the things that had only been visible to me, and since you also possess psychogenesis stuff, it wouldn't be that difficult for you. But this process won't make the ghost words invisible to my ears, which means that I would be able to hear what you people speak too. But then maybe not too, since I would be far too much in the depth of releasing as much strength and power as possible. And yes, another thing that I'm too immature for; this process requires a lot of psychological strength, and I can't do it. Not now at least and that's why Brian is gonna be teaching me about that when the ball is done with, and we would have ample time to practice on my abilities."

"What are you thinking? I mean, I don't want to sound kinda sneaky – though I do sound sort of like that – but then your expression gives me the biggest of the suspicions as to what naughtiness must a queen like you be up to. Not exactly naughtiness since queens are not supposed to be naughty, but then, I've also never seen that expression on your face before."

I simply shook my head, and then went back to my room. Though I couldn't sleep this time either, at least I didn't keep getting nightmares and was instead awakened by the new plan I had. The next morning, I went to meet Brian, and decided to vaguely talk him into training Iris into whatever the supernatural function she had said she possessed but wasn't strong enough at this age to do so – the one that could allow me private communication with Elora . . . or any other dead person.

Brian was firstly confused as to why I wanted this so desperately and suddenly, and no matter how many valid reasons I tried to make up for getting him to teach Iris all that, he didn't seem to believe me totally, and always seemed to turn out more logical. My points were dully that Iris was a blooming marksinna and to keep her in the good looks of both the Trylle and the Vittra – since she was a beautiful string reuniting the Trylle and the Vittra, she was to be educated and trained more seriously.

However Brian's sayings were that the right age for anyone to be nourishing his/her abilities would be around seventeen or eighteen, and Iris was to wait for more than a year to come to the part where she could use her abilities on their full extents. The 'more than a year' part scared me since I couldn't wait for more than a year to talk to all those people with whom I wanted to.

Losing the argument had left me all physically frustrated, irate and helpless (my drug bracelet was not there with me), and after many days I again went ahead in wrecking another guest room. When I came out finally after some hours and went back to my room – my face all dirty, tear-stained, my clothes all moist and partially torn – it was another surprise to see Iris.

"What have you got to say?" I asked tiredly. "I'm anyways not ready to listen, so get out of my room."

Iris didn't react all surprisedly or innocently to my harshness, and instead said "What are you going to do now?"

"What do mean by that? I'm gonna _politely_ ask you to get out of my room or else I'll move you like _this_." I used some of my telekinesis to shift Iris off her feet as she went a few feet away from my closet door, landing uncertainly back on her feet.

"Your majesty, I'm trying my best not to be irritable or talkative, and it turns out that you're definitely not cooperative in answering me. Brian told me about whatever you were proposing to him earlier. I understand your feelings and motives, and you'll be surprised to hear that I didn't tell him about your true reasons when he told me whatever shitty reasons you had invented to make him train me into this.

"Well, if I were you, I would have probably used persuasion on Brian. I mean, it's about a thousand times more effective than the so called 'valid' reasons you gave him. And anyways, in a way he's right too; I'm too young to still be coached into all this. I might have the capability, but not the immunity to be able to recover from its psychological side-effects. No offense though; hey, what's on your mind now?"

Suddenly I wasn't all pissed off at every single person in the world anymore, not especially pissed at Iris anymore; after days I was thinking of something this creative. "You said, you are have the capability, right?"

"Um – yeah."

"Well, I have the immunity for you then." When Iris gave me a questioning look, I simply strode towards my dressing table and picked up the drug bracelet. I wouldn't need much of it if I'm able to communicate with the dead side (the communication would be my new drug), so I guessed I didn't mind sharing it occasionally with someone who did me the favor of bringing me to the dead.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

The Second Trainer

Before meeting Iris, I had always been pretty confused by the two types of deads I had seen in movies. one was when people died, they went to heaven or hell depending upon their deeds; that was where they probably had a peephole or something like that to view the different parts of the earth and look at the living people going through their daily lives without actually being able to modify it (afterall they were just dead people, not some God Almighty who ruled over all). This category was called simply the 'dead', but people made it sound like a good death.

The second movies were where after people died, they stayed on earth itself, and haunted people. These were not the 'dead' but instead named differently as the 'ghosts', and could modify and haunt others on earth; the word 'ghost' automatically made it sound like a bad and unpleasant death. After some interaction with Iris, I had realized that the dead people could actually choose when they wanted to go to heaven and when to stay on earth (there wasn't an option of hell, since each person had done something good in his or her life which made the person deserving enough to be a guest to heaven).

They could stay at heaven whenever they wanted to (that was where they got all the world's luxury and comfort) and visit earth whenever the wanted to, which they mostly did to view the places that left them with many memories. The dead could see or sense dead people, but not the living people; well, except for some special ones like Iris, which is why most deads got pretty excited sensing her.

It was the day after the one when I had started seeing some almost ridiculous hope in Iris's abilities. My instincts didn't actually trust her for my secrets, but I guess it really was worth a try – all these crazy plans of mine. "Well, here comes a point where you can't be social and outspoken about certain things anymore."

"Okay; well, I can't promise you that, but –"

"Uh – uh, if you can't promise this, then get the shit out of here. If you _can_ , you're welcome to stay here and listen to the rest of my plan, and be a part of it."

"Fine, I'll not tell anyone about . . . your _plan_. Though I would've seriously advised you to be careful in whatever crooked thing you're planning to experiment with me. I mean, after all I'm only human; sorry, not human, I'm only a Trylle. God, I've been here for almost two weeks here and I confuse myself with a human; that's the most pathetically embarrassing. Or so Finn says"

"Don't talk about Finn. Anyways, what is exactly Brian's ability?" I interruptedly questioned, hoping hard that it was not very much related with Iris's abilities. "Is it related to your ability?"

"It's partially related; I mean, my ability is communicating with the dead people, while his ability is communicating with the non-living stuff. Like he can speak to chair or table, but only the ones that are in good conditions – not the broken, torn ones, that would be in biotic standards be considered dead. Maybe that's why people chose him – or maybe he volunteered – to be my trainer; because we are genetically and ability-vise related."

I thought for some time and then said "Okay, so from now you have two trainers. The primary one – who would teach you things according to your age and maturity level, and who would be slow and more detailed and who would train you into everything – would be Brian. He will be publicly known, no big secret and all that. Then the second trainer would be me – not to be mentioned to anyone, secondary, and the biggest secret someone is ever confiding in you in your lifetime.

"I will train you secretly and will not look upon to your age or maturity level. I will just train you and make you perform whatever I've trained you into, and then heal your aftermaths. While Brian's trainings would be legal and useful to you, my trainings would be illegal and useful only for me." And then I explained the properties of the healing bracelet to her.

"You're accepting my request?" I asked, hoping I don't have to use persuasion or manipulate her against her will, if she refuses.

"Okay." She said, as if even she knew that if she didn't accept it willy, I could persuade her unscientifically.

"Good; we start our . . . classes this afternoon, after lunch. I won't be accepting any fees except your good performance." I said satisfically.

"Um, well, Wendy," this was the first time she had called me by my name. "Why don't you have lunch, like, with us today? I mean, sure, it's not to be a very queeny thing lunching with all sorts of people right from markises to trackers to humans, but then, we'd just like your company. I hardly see you eating; god knows where you get all that energy from. Though I must say that you've shrunk a lot in weight since I first met you."

"I'll see if you can keep your promise, and then maybe I'll solve that mystery for you." I said. "As for lunch, sorry, I'm not much into social gatherings; especially casual ones."

As Iris walked outside my room, I couldn't help eyeing the cupboard drawer where I kept my nutritioning drugs supply – the very ones that gave me the energy if not the weight or fat. I wondered if that day when Iris comes to know about them from my mouth, would actually come, or would my tutoring Iris plan be a big failure.

Anyways, Iris was on time for her class, and I tried to act as much as Tove had with me when he had been my trainer. Before sending her off to lunch, I had asked Iris to get out some information from Brian as to how could a normal Trylle without the speaking-to-things-that-are-not-supposed-to-speak-ability can speak to a thing-that-is-not-supposed-to-speak with the help of a Trylle who has the speaking-to-things-that-don't-speak-ability.

And this was what she told me "Okay, so Brian was there for lunch thankfully, and I simply stated out the facts such as that after what he had explained to me after his conversation with you this morning, I had been kinda curious as to can this thing actually be done. And that was how I went on and on in my usual would-chat-as-much-as-I-can manner, and got out many things out of him.

"True, he was vague, spending most of the time telling me that you were being insensible and that I should not be taught to do this at such a young age, but then I managed to get out the basics from whatever he said. first of all, me – as the person who can speak to dead things – and you – as the person who cannot do so but wants to do so – will maintain some physical contact –"

"Okay, physical contact." I said, immediately grasping Iris's hand; it was cold and bony, but then which young Trylle would have plump hands.

"Yeah, and then we both concentrate, like, really hard and yield some sort of a power that can make me connect you to the dead and that can make you connected with the dead. Not exactly concentrate, I guess; whatever brain-power-summoning we all do before we use our abilities; you know what I mean right?"

I nodded, though I wasn't very sure what she meant. Most probably she was talking about the concentration and focus I needed in order to yield some telekinetic stuff, and I could do that. "What next?"

"Well, then he vaguely said that you can also hear the dead voices; not very clearly perhaps, but you can. You know, you as the person who's being connected with the dead people side. So . . . you're willing to try this, because he said that it could have a pretty horrific aftermath on me? I mean, I know you're gonna elsewise manipulate me into doing so by persuasion (so she knew that I had planned that as a backup), but then, I'm just asking in case you think that maybe it's not really necessary afterall."

"You might think I'm very selfish for doing so, but yes, I would like to do it, and much better done if without needing to persuade you in Trylle manners." Iris nodded.

It was probably the first time I could say that Iris actually looked kind of scared; not exactly intimidated, but just basically scared and anxious. I tried not to dwell too much to the fact that I must be – that I really am – her reason for getting so scared, and instead continued with our plan. I placed my hands, palm-downwards, on hers, and she wrapped her fingers around them, shutting her eyes.

"And well," I said, before her eyelids were entirely shielding the irises. "Just letting you know that as a teacher, I won't be much of a theoretical teacher like Brian had been, but instead more of a practical one. You know practical experiments and sorts."

She nodded barely with her eyes before shutting them back again, and I realized that I kind of was not accustomed to her being silent and just nodding. Iris was more of the kind of person who would give an entire paragraph of verbal response than a small eye-nod. Maybe silence was also a side-effect of her fear, and I again felt guilty about it. Trying not to add up another antagonizing factor in my list of things that excruciate me, I closed my eyes too, and summoned whatever brain powers I had.

It was a complicating process for sure, and keeping in mind the fact that Iris was still immature and weak for such type of a complex form of her own ability, I tried to reduce her efforts by yielding a little more of my psycho-powers. It was – I hoped – same for me to do right now as it was when I wanted to telekinetically move something or persuade someone.

I anyways did all I could, summoned all my psychiatric energy, and then bridged up the connection between me and the dead world. I could literally feel the strength of the mental power physically, burning my veins lightly and a little more mildly in my temples. I could feel the difference between my own yielded stuff and Iris's, and I stayed that way with my nails digging inside Iris's hand and my eyes clutched shut, until a small (but strong) voice whispered in the air "Open your eyes; you're missing everything."

It belonged to Iris, and when I opened my eyes with some slight courage, I looked around at first instinct. The library was the same as it had always been; rows and rows of the bookshelves, small desks at a corner. Even I was sitting in the same table where I had been sitting when me and Iris had not been actually fiddling experimentally with her abilities.

However Iris's eyes were still closed, and from her expression it looked like she was doing a lot for things to continue this way. Also I noticed that something had changed the color scale of my vision, and I was viewing things in a more ancient, unreal way. I had got on thinking that everything was just the way it had been before we had started this weird spell, when I suddenly saw a figure in midair. A pretty tall, intimidating-looking girl who looked around Duncan's age (in the middle or late twenties) was striding around in midair. In a way, this lady looked exactly like me – especially the eyes that were all almond-shaped and a beautiful shade of mahogany. The way she regarded me was of both confusion combined with pleasure and excitement.

"Ah, good to see that we've got another guest around here." She said, sounding surprisingly pleasant for someone who looked as intimidating as her.

"Who are you?" I couldn't have been more surprised than this to realize that I could even speak.

"I am Queen Lovisa – trust me, you younger generation people don't want to hear my wide collection of last names."

Lovisa. Elora had mentioned this name before when she had been suggesting names for my christening ceremony, and that definitely had to mean that Lovisa was a queen who had lived couple of decades ago, and had most probably also had quite of a fame and respect. Within these few seconds of my recollection of Elora's information about Lovisa, I had known that my idea of assaulting Iris illegally and offering its treatment in exchange of interacting with the dead, had been successful.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Hope

I immediately broke the connection between me and Iris and the dead world, as soon as the full-fledged effect of my success came on to me. After about months I had actually smiled; a natural, unfaked smile of victory, success, hope and joy, and it was such bliss to feel my jaw muscles stretch involuntarily into one that I stretched them all the wider into the hugest grin ever.

Iris echoed my exact thoughts by saying "whoa, did you even smile? I mean, look at you, always depressive, angered, moody, silent – the entire queen-ish personalitude. In fact, you know what; I had first thought this was another custom to be followed by the queen – no smiling, no grinning. And well, being well aware about your charming qualities as a queen here in Forening, it suited you exactly fine without a smile; afterall maybe that's another reason that you broke all records of the queen's no-smile law, and came into being one of the greatest rulers ever."

I let out a laugh; an actual, merry, unfalsified laugh, out of my joy. "Oh my god" said Iris, tilting her head in wonder and amusement "I wonder how things would have been like if you laughed like this on a daily basis. I mean, look at that; you actually let out that ha-ha-ha sound from your lips; that is one of the most impossible things ever imaginable. God, I feel – you know, what you call like winning a lottery – winning it, 'cause I must have probably been the first one you've ever smiled or laughed that way at."

"I could say the same about your silence and anxiousness when you were just going to bring me in to the world of dead." I said, still smiling. "And, by the way, I've laughed before too; and smiled."

"Why –" she began, but I cut her off.

"Don't ask me the reason for all that; maybe if I find you trustworthy in future, I might . . . no, I actually won't." It didn't feel right straightaway refusing to answer her first question after she had helped me such a great deal, so I said in a kinder tone "Sorry, I kind of understand your curiosity, but then it's just not the kind of thing you would need to know about. Oh, and, what all damages did I do to you during the process?"

"Surprisingly, nothing much; guess I was just getting unnecessarily anxious before the spell-casting session, since it wasn't a very hard effort to do that. I mean, don't underestimate me and my psychological or internal status, but then it wasn't as bad as Brian had explained to me. Probably he was trying to keep me from doing that, god knows why. And then, you look how I feel, so I guess the side-effects serve both of us." She wasn't lying since honestly she didn't look all critical or psychotic; just faintly exhausted and weakened, but no major damage and all that.

"Feeling kind of unsettled or . . ." I poked at my temple with my index finger.

"Oh my god, I'm not going all psychiatric." She said defensively.

"Don't feel embarrassed if you want to use the bracelet; you're always welcome to use it after we cast this kind of a spell or experiment with your abilities." I said, trying to be as helpful and comforting as possible; almost as if I owed it to her for doing this favor for me – which I of course did.

But anyways, ultimately Iris went off at the end of the class without the use of the drug bracelet. In a way, I was selfishly happy that I got more of the pyschi-healing drugs for me, and lesser to spare for Iris if that was how much she consumed on a daily basis of practice. Also after Iris had gone off to attend her actual training sessions with Brian, I went around for quite a while with this smile on my face. Iris's 'homework' for the day had been to find out through her twenty-four-into-seven-bond-with-the-dead about where was Elora currently situated and inform her of our rendezvous point where me, Iris and Elora were to meet at her next training session and experiment talking to Elora.

That was some trashy and selfish homework for an illegal advance training I was giving her, and this was Iris – a person who would rather jump around and talk the piss out of people than do such nonsensical favors for queeny teenagers; so it was indeed a surprise when she turned out to have done her homework. Iris explained it all in a series of fast words that she had met Elora's ghost in some room filled with paintings and had informed her of our rendezvous point, to which Elora had agreed.

It turned out that we had decided to meet up after some thought in my old bedroom, and the fact that Iris had admitted that due to the immense pressure and strength of the bond that we created temporarily between me and the dead side, she could not hear or pay much attention into whom I was interacting with, had also made me less nervous about having to reveal some unmentionable secrets to her too.

My conversation with Elora was short; maybe about only for ten minutes, but then it was in a way satisfying. I tried not to exaggerate or understate much in my narration; in fact, I decided not to speak too much about my emotions at all, and just focus on the basic points of what the others must have seen in me. I told her firstly about the newcomer – Iris – and her talents, about how I was training her illegally and using her to interact with the dead side.

This didn't seem to please her very much, but she kind of teared up when she realized how hard I was working and to what limits I had gone to only to interact with my dead mother. That was when I gravely told her that it was not just herself, but also someone else whom I was doing this for; someone with whom I hadn't yet had the courage to even clearly think about.

I went about the war, how I defeated Oren and how I lost someone else in turn to do so. Elora said that she was definitely proud of me for doing so, and it was good that even without my mentioning the name of Mr. Unmentionable, she could figure out whom I was talking about. She was – from what I could tell from her tone – thankful when I said how Finn had romantically abandoned me; maybe Elora had never ever wanted a tracker with me, even if it was a snarky Vittra markis instead.

In a short while Elora told me about her life up there. She said that it was basically beautiful – all tension free – with no stressful jobs, other than the fact that she was pretty irate with the chancellor who often came up to mess up with her heavenly life up there. The best thing was that she could stay all young and strong and still use her abilities to their fullest extents, which meant she painted stuff and talked to people in their minds all day long.

Finally we had to end the conversation because Iris was getting weaker and the bond got a little hazy – like a radio with bad inceptions. I offered her the bracelet, and this time she didn't resist it.

We practiced a couple more times that week, though I tried to limit the instances when I tortured Iris so badly. It just got me all sentimental at seeing the scare and anxious look on Iris's face before we started, and the weakened, almost scatterbrained condition of her when she would put an end to the bond between me and the dead side.

I had expected the anxiousness to fade away gradually as we did more of our connecting-me-to-the-dead-side-spell practices, but if I didn't know better I could say that it had almost gone worse. It must really take a scaringly lot of her to conduct such complex stuff with her immature abilities, and no matter how much I would've loathed her talkative nature and inconsideration, I respected her for her major help to me in this. Though, considering how selfish and inconsiderate _I_ was being now with her, I dare not call Iris that anymore; in comparison she was way more abnegate, considerate and understanding than I was to her. Afterall she was understanding fully and helping me on something that I couldn't even trust enough to help her.

It was just that for days, I was going around the palace, trying to seek _him_ , without even evidently knowing where his dead soul must be wandering, I was just lamely experimenting around everywhere in the palace, trying to hunt him down. Basically it was just that in our limited time, me and Iris went to places and started up this spell, where once I was in the dead side, I would check out for _him_ just to till now find no traces as to where _he_ was.

The bracelet was getting used even more quickly now that there were two users other than just one, and I was scared as to what I was going to do once it would get entirely consumed. It was just so ridiculous, I was already planning some deal with the Oslinna king for another bracelet or ornament with his healing abilities inside it, in return for maybe some tracker help or architecture help.

I often also talked to Elora – which felt good after so much of my recent unsuccessful plans and experiments. Okay, the experiment of trying to connect with the dead was probably wonderfully successful (god, I had even laughed and smiled that day), but then it must have been a mistake to assume that it would be an equally easy task finding out the required ghosts. And this failure made me all the more mad, most of which I couldn't just end with a dose of the drug bracelet since I was all the more desperately trying to conserve the fuel as much as possible.

And well, the conservation was all the more of a failure. As long as I would be all the more self-conscious about using less of the calming and psychiatric healing abilities of the bracelet, the more would it be obvious how much of the healing drug I had consumed from the bracelet. I wish I could just come back to the night of Oren's death, and just before waging an attack on the Vittra, drugged _him_ and not have got _him_ here with me at all. In a way, it would have been all the more easier and less depressive without _his_ participation in the war.

Now I almost regret everything in my life. Also the night in Oslinna, if I could've not let _him_ drag me away from my tension and stress over to sex, I would've saved both my virginity and the fetus that currently occupied the bump in my uterus.

One day when I was lunching quietly in the queen's chambers (which partially looked like a greenhouse since two of the walls were entirely of glass), Iris entered the room. It was much of a startle and unexpected shock seeing her here, especially for the fact that I hadn't made any efforts to hide my swelling belly right now, and she wasn't supposed to know about it.

Tove had gone to the library or so I presumed, and with that free time of solitude, I had removed all my extra padding for the places that didn't swell (in order to neutralize the uterus swell). With Iris's entrance, I quickly draped a shawl back on myself, and pretended to not be very obvious about the fact that I was trying to hide my pregnancy. "What is it Iris?" I asked, almost tiredly.

"Well, I don't know what to say and how to, because judging on your unsettling emotions and moods, I couldn't actually figure out how you'd react to this. I mean, it's been, like, almost a day since I kept this from you, but then maybe it's nothing afterall to concern yourself with. I don't know; it's just that in these awkward situations where I don't know what to do, my curiosity always decides to take the better of me, and here I am to ask you to clarify my doubt. Okay, maybe I shouldn't have come to you since I have a feeling you're never gonna answer this no matter how many crucial favors I do for you, but then, I couldn't find a better person to ask about this. I mean, I don't know, it just seemed like you were the right person to go to to ask this –"

"Hang on, Iris. I don't actually get full sense of what you're saying, but okay, ask whatever you've got to ask." I interrupted tiredly.

"Not exactly ask, I just need you to clarify a doubt . . . if you want to, of course. If you don't, I . . . well, I don't know; I guess I'll learn to live with that. Anyway, what I'm saying is that, day before yesterday, I went to the Secret Garden (the Secret Garden was my word, but I didn't interrupt or object). That was where I saw – or rather heard – another dead person. Well, the ghost of the person didn't say anything, but as soon as it must have kinda sensed me – a live creature with a bond towards the dead – it immediately said just one word; one question, I would've said. 'Wendy?' That was it, and I answered back 'No, it's not Wendy, its Iris instead', and then the person was kinda disappointed and went back to being on its own.

"I mean, that is definitely a weird thing; you don't even introduce yourself, get excited about me and all that. Though, at the same time, its relieving that I don't get to deal with a 'hi, I am ABC' trash intro. But then, your name was what got me all puzzled. I couldn't question you about it because I knew something was very fishy about you and that you wouldn't even ultimately answer me. But now, as I said before, my curiosity's getting the better of me, and that's how I just blurted all that shit out."

I remained silent. "Can you tell me what the person's . . . sex was?"

"Male." She said, and that was when I realized that my plan of getting back to _him_ hadn't been all of a failure afterall.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

First Interaction

"Where did you say you heard that? The Secret Garden?" I asked, as we were descending a massive staircase of the mansion. I was so excited and desperate to go out there that I had almost forgotten to carry the drug bracelet with me, after which I had to again send back Iris in my room to fetch it; afterall pregnancy doesn't simplify things very much.

"Yup. I mean, I'm not that sure – definitely not sure – whether the voice would actually be there; I mean, it was day before yesterday when I heard that voice. It must have moved on somewhere, though there's no harm hoping it would still be there. I actually didn't know you would get so desperate and excited over all this; I mean, you really don't get very excited about many things; in fact, more depressed, I could say. Plus, I always knew you were searching for someone who was dead, though I didn't know that it was _this_ particular person. It seemed more like it would be Elora you're seeking."

I simply nodded, and went ahead until we reached the Secret Garden. I chose a stone bench to sit on and then beckoned Iris to do the same so that we could again cast our spell. But Iris's irises had completely disappeared and there were only the whites of her eyes, fully concentrating on something else.

"Iris?" I asked, kind of worriedly.

"Shhh" she whispered, probably directed to me, and started walking to some other direction of the garden.

Worriedly, I got up and followed her, making sure she didn't trip herself and break her bones or something with her eyes that weird way. It was like her lenses had gone to some other universe to view something totally else, and there were none in her eye sockets to give her the vision. She wandered somewhere around the garden, and then went back inside the mansion.

Lamely, I followed her awkwardly back inside. She went through some long hallways, staircases, opened doors of some rooms, and occasionally also muttered and whispered a lot. I wondered if she was doing the same thing that she had done when I had first discovered that she could talk to the dead at the night in Elora's room; talking to the dead people.

She went down to the servants' quarters, and entered one room; and without knowing what to do, I had simply followed her. When I realized that this was Iris's final destination, I let myself sit on a dusty bed and rest my back against a cushion. For a couple of seconds I closed my eyes, let the panting and nausea get a little more under control, and then I opened my eyes and took into the old servant's room I was in. belatedly – and with quite of a shock – I realized that it was the very room where _he_ had been kept when _he_ was under imprisonment here. I gasped loud, surprised that Iris had lead me out here.

"Where have you got me?" I almost trembled, as I asked Iris. It was a place that inhabited a lot of memories about _him_ and it was definitely not very pleasant visiting this place full of memories again; to relive a microsecond of each memory unavoidably again.

Now Iris's eyes were back to normal, and she was in the same world where I was. "This is where he is? The dead person you wanted to talk to you; or so I assumed."

I flinched at the words 'dead person', and noticing my pain, Iris stopped speaking. "So, should we . . . cast the spell again?" she asked, not knowing saying what would be right and what would not.

I didn't reply to that, and instead said "What did you do with your eyes that made you lead up to this room?"

"Well, I told you, the default and involuntary mode that is onset always is the audio mode; where I can hear those people. There is another mode where I can both hear _and_ see the dead, and that was how I was just right now. I just talked around to the other ghosts, tried to ask where he was, checked out through my dead vision, and finally managed to lead you out here, where he actually is."

"Wait, I think you said that you were too immature to nurture in this." I narrowed my eyes.

"That was more than a week ago. And now that I've learnt illegitimately how to connect people to the dead side, it should make sense that I should also start learning about this seeing-ghosts stuff. I mean, seeing ghosts isn't illegal either, but then it's just that Brian started me off by trying to coach me into this, and I gradually just mastered it all. Okay, not exactly master; but I know the basics and can perform it pretty well without using an ornament to heal the sideffects after conducting this. Brian anyway thinks that I should be able to do this perfectly until before my debutante, and turns out that his expectations didn't all go wasted. You know, I finally got it all; though in our special classes I had decided to control its usage in order to save energy."

"When is your debutante ball?" I asked, realizing that it had not yet occurred.

"Day after tomorrow. Brian says that the dress would be ready by today evening, and I still need to work on my babbling-control, and then I would be, all like, perfectly set and ready for the ball. Though –"

"Well, thanks for that; can we now work on our spell?"

"Yeah, sure." And then I placed my hand on hers, and for the first time in a few months, _his_ face was right there. The beautiful honey-blonde hair, the wide smile that reached his eyes, causing the cute dimple, the tanned skin – overall he was just gorgeous. I couldn't even believe that after all those painful months of believing in his death, I was actually getting to see him – even if he was still dead.

For the first time in months, I allowed myself to say his name "Loki?"

And for the first time in months, I allowed myself to hear his voice "Princess, how nice of you to pay me a visit."

I felt a million emotions rush through me at one time, and I welcomed all of them together inside me. In all a blur, I felt the urge to go hug him tight and feel his lips on my hair; but the doubt whether I'd be able to have any physical contact with a dead object stopped me.

"I'm the queen, right now." I replied as calmly as I was capable of at this moment, what with the endless emotions running through me.

"Sorry. _Your majesty_ , how nice of you to pay me a visit, now that you had finally realized that I couldn't do anything to visit _you_ , and even better because you have actually found out a way to contact with me. I'm indeed privileged."

I actually found myself smiling. I probably meant to say something about Iris and about how was his life right now, but instead my hand just involuntarily went over to my stone-hard belly bump, and I let out "I'm pregnant."

"Ohh," said Loki, and instead of being shocked or appalled, he merely seemed disappointed and jealous. "I didn't suppose you'd actually like to sleep with another guy after immediately losing one. Anyways, congrats to the royal baby; the heir to the throne."

"Loki," I said, finally realizing the misunderstanding he had been getting at. He had been thinking that after he . . . (well, after the war with the Vittra), I had slept with Tove and got pregnant, and was now carrying a legitimate heir to the throne in my uterus. "I'm pregnant with _you_!" That bought him in the shock and disbelief. "And the baby is due in a little more than five months."

"Wendy, I . . . I'm so sorry about . . . this." He said, and I could feel the weight of hurt and pain in his voice.

I shook my head. "Its not your fault, afterall I wanted to do this; in Oslinna, remember?"

"Why don't you . . . get the fetus out?" he suggested slowly.

"You mean abort it?" I gave him a look. "Of course not. Loki, this is the last piece of you that I'm left with, and there is no way I'm going to give it up. It is the last thing of your blood, and I cannot just put an end to it. I cannot let it happen what happened to you; _especially_ after what happened to you."

"You cannot just let it develop inside you, Wendy. It's illegal, scandalous and dangerous. What are you planning to do with it anyway? After it is out; I mean, you cannot just pretend that this baby belongs to you and Tove."

"Well, apparently I am more into illegitimate secrets than pretense. So, the birth will be an illegitimate secret, and when the child is switched at birth, it would be another illegitimate thing too."

"Very carefully planned, but what about the baby's mankslig?" I could tell that Loki was trying to put me up with more intricate challenges and complications, maybe so that I could change my mind into getting the fetus aborted afterall. But my firm decision of keeping the baby alive was as strong-set as ever, and I wasn't going to step back from it.

"Twins. The human mother gives birth to twins; one human child, and one troll child." I smiled mentally at my plans, victorious at having defeated Loki in his attempts to change my mind.

"Yeah" said Loki, finally almost giving up too. "try to search for another brunette-blonde couple in the hospitals, so that the _twins_ – though fraternal – don't look awfully fraternal."

"I'll keep that in mind." I said, wondering about how different, less-suspicious and accepting it would have been if Elora and the other trackers on duty would have dropped me in as a changeling in a brunette family instead of a fair-skinned, fair-haired and fair-eyed family from where I could always distinguish myself.

"So, now that you've told me the most fearful and shocking news, I'm still pretty curious about how did you manage to come up till here." Said Loki.

I told him all about Iris, her strange abilities, and tried to shortcut her illegal usage as much as possible. Loki even talked about how depressing life had been in between an earth where he could only view the things and places but not the humans, and heaven – which wasn't as beautiful as normal, human reviews had said. Our conversation almost turned back into any other ordinary conversation we both would've had – with him making me smile with his bizarre sense of humor – and it wasn't until the bond started to get slightly scratchy, that I realized that the bond was also limited and Iris was bravely risking her sanity to make this interaction possible.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

The Painting

I had apparently damaged Iris a little more than I was supposed to with my and Loki's previous interaction, and she had to take a pretty heavy dose of the drug bracelet before she could get back to normal. When I came to, I had realized two things; one, that Iris's nose and mouth were bleeding almost unattendedly, and two, that it had been almost an hour of talking with Loki.

For some time, I tuned out the high that seeing Loki and speaking to him gave me, and attended to Iris's bleeding. Somehow when I had managed to recover her from her mental pressure (with the bracelet) and she could sit straight and breath comfortably, I could actually relax and let myself think about _him_. I had skipped the rest of the day from having any other interactions with ghosts. The next day when I had been debating whether to contact Elora or Loki, I came to know very belatedly of the fact that today was supposed to be debutante ball for Iris.

According to her age, her ball was supposed to be not exactly a debutante, since she wasn't to be an adult yet, but still the Kroners decided to call it one. Willa would be there to help Iris get ready for the ball, and while Iris was going to be the main star of the event, me and Tove would still be present during the ball to offer her our blessings and respects and to represent the ruling line of siblings that Iris had in the Trylle community.

The even more amazing thing (something that was happening probably for the first time in any Trylle debutante) was that some Vittra officials had also been invited to Iris's ball. One was this marksinna of her age with whom she had got pretty close with, due to their occasional exchanges and meet-ups. The second person arriving here was the very Vittra queen herself – Sara – and most people considered it as an impressive honor that Sara was coming to Forening to attend a Trylle marksinna's debutante. Many considered this as the developing good termed relationship between the Trylle and Vittra.

The debutante was to be in the Kroner's mansion, and it wasn't until had been getting dressed to go there that I realized with belatedness that it was the first time I was ever going to the Kroner's place. Rest of the time it had always been people in Elora's mansion.

Since I didn't have a Willa to recommend me on my outfits, I just chose an off-shouldered, rose-pink gown in which I found the color pretty awesome. I reminded myself that this was Iris's night and that I didn't have to look as striking as a queen would have to on her night, and played simple and not very dressy. My queeny tiara was groaningly a compulsion to be worn this night, and while I was finding a perfect place in my hair to insert the tiara, Tove's question surprised me all of a sudden.

"You've got pretty close to my sister." He said.

"Yeah." I said, because firstly his question sounded vaguely as if he knew or was about to know exactly _how_ I had got close to his sister, and secondly because even I hadn't realized how much closer ghost-hunting had got us both.

"I've seen it in your auras. You both are quite comfortable with each other, almost as if in empathy of something that only you both would understand."

"Well, it kind of is that way." I tried not to give much out.

Tove went to the depths of his thought, and I wondered if he was thinking whether even Iris had had some similar loss of love's life or something similar to my case, because of which we could both rely so much on each other for empathy, and get this close. I hoped he wouldn't be questioning Iris on that, since the poor child wouldn't know what to reply to that.

My internal padding underneath the clothes made my size seem a lot fleshier than I actually was, but it at least hid the pregnancy lump of belly. When we both were done with dressing up for the ball (I wasn't sure whether I would be able to dance or not), we walked up to the sleek Cadillac that awaited us outside the grand, main door.

The Kroners' place wasn't as far away from Elora's place as I had been expecting it would've been. It was probably a ten minute drive from the palace, and viewing Tove's house for the first time gave me an unrecognized feeling that I had never felt before. It was very much like any other Hamptons villa, except with a slightly more Edwardian edge to it than the ones where Kim had tried to murder me. the color of the roofs were probably a green (again to the greenish tone the Kroner skins bear since birth), while the walls were a whitewashed white. Green ivy and other vines I didn't recognize in the darkness hung from the walls, and their porch was decorated with white ribbons and balloons on posts.

Maybe it was in a way pretty childish (almost like someone's first birthday décor), but I found it innovative and cute. Inside the decoration was even better, with the main theme – white and gold ribbons – almost everywhere. In the large party hall (which was slightly smaller than my Disney-fairytale ballroom), the white and golden chairs were all set in neat circles around several rounded tables.

A long table with the food in it awaited all of us, and the rest of the space was cleared out for the dancing. Iris was to make a grand appearance in a couple of minutes, and till then we were all free to socialize and interact with other guests. Being the queen turned out as something extremely difficult in such cases since most people would just run over directly to you and start off with some extremely unimportant and unnecessary conversation, and I wasn't much into talking today.

Tove – like me – felt the same about the socializing law for rulers, and simply went ahead and started picking at the food's table, selecting a variety of vegan stuff that was laid out. I (facing an even greater disadvantage since I wasn't much into food either) just paced around awkwardly, and finally sat down in one of the chairs after I had tired out of that.

"Your Majesty," said markis Bain, the new chancellor. "It is good to see you here at a marksinna's pre-debutante."

I just smiled at him, trying to keep it as natural as was possible for me. his comment – though I knew was just meant as a polite greet – still sounded pretty stingy and hurtful to me, almost as if he knew what I had been doing in the palace. I sincerely hoped he wouldn't next comment on me putting on so much weight.

It was a matter of few awkward seconds between us when no one said anything, and then Bain gradually started to walk away from me, out towards the wine glasses. I didn't know whether to assume that he was going there for a peg of rum or to just get away from me and the awkwardness. Thankfully it was just a few minutes after that that Iris made her heavenly entrance as the debutante. She was in a purple and white ombre gown that was strapless and – like Elora – made her look as if she were floating instead of walking.

Her hair was in this messy bun that somehow made her face more radiant and attractive with all those loose strands of curly hair suspending from her head and the soft lump of hair in a rounded bun at the back of her head. Her face was all in a bright, striking smile, and somehow with this smile, she could always put you to a good mood (well, until she starts blathering and then it becomes annoying).

As soon as she had reached the end of her entrance, people slowly went over to her for questioning her different things and introducing themselves to her. It wasn't a very large crowd as my debutante ball had held, and not many people were completely unintroduced to Iris (since she was pretty social and a major help in the Trylle-Vittra unison), so she was much freer than I had been.

Somehow I couldn't just help comparing her ball to mine. In my party, I had been kind of sad and under depression due to Finn's resignation from his post just the day before. So, I felt kind of jealous that Iris was making such a cheerful and sanguine impression on the people (who were already under the impression that Iris could reunite the Trylle and Vittra with her amity).

I decided to spare Iris for today and let the others interact with her before I could get my chance to do so. I anyways didn't have anything very important to say to her, so I guess, it could wait. For the meanwhile, I went over for some food myself. Red wine would be preferable, but I wasn't sure how alcohol would do when you are pregnant, and not wanting to risk my pregnancy in any way, I decided against it, and chose food.

There was a lot of variation to choose from, but even as Trylle, we were too picky for our nutritioning. I chose some cheesy mushrooms, and they didn't taste that bad; maybe umami wasn't that absurd for Trylle. "Wendy," a voice interrupted my thoughts about mushrooms and cheese. "It's good to see you here."

"Yeah, you too." I said, facing Sara with her neat, black ponytail and a scarlet evening dress.

"I see that you are waiting here for the crowd to cease beside our little debutante before you go greet her." Said Sara.

I nodded with a smile. "You too, right?"

"Of course. Afterall the queens would always like to interact with total privacy and personalization; not with the rest of the town."

I smiled at that too, though it was a bit forced. "So, what have you been doing lately?"

"Well, just . . ." here came the part for which I hadn't thought of any reasonable excuse. "Working out with our new marksinna."

"She's been a real help to this society, you know that, right? All this Vittra-Trylle reuniting people had been trying on for ages; she could do this all pretty quickly, and successfully." Said Sara, considerably.

"Well, nothing very noteworthy between the Trylle and Vittra have yet happened, but definitely, our relationships have improved a lot." I didn't add that earlier it was like the biggest mistake and danger having a Vittra (especially the queen herself) in some Trylle event.

"Don't worry Wendy, something very noteworthy _will_ happen between the Trylle and Vittra; sooner or later." Her words left over a mysteriously chilling effect over me as she walked over away to interact with Iris.

Iris seemed to having this unending group of people around her, and I soon gave up that I would ever even get to have a proper eye contact with Iris. Tove and I got to the official dining venue, where the food was served to all respected officials. After dinner, was the dance, where as the soft waltz played in the background, people skidded around the space, occasionally twirling.

I just watched all dancing couples from a distance, and as I began to lose myself in various thoughts, Iris's hushed whispering voices brought me back to the reality. "Hey, Iris" I saluted her. "How is your ball going?"

"Well, it's perfectly beautiful like any party a person could ever wish for – in fact I have to say that it is going much more better than I would've thought it would've gone – but then, it's also about worse in a way than I would've thought it would have gone. There is a problem."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Well, Elora just came some time ago – you know, when I was getting dressed for this party. yeah, so she came in her ghost form to me and told me to pass this on to you. Well, since up there you don't get all these psychiatric probs or migraines after using your abilities too much, she says that she had been painting unlimitedly and not getting any such problems or headaches so far. That's why she can just put in like, loads of efforts effortlessly and paint precognitive stuff for living people. And well, she just stretched off her limits too far and painted something."

"What did she paint?" I tried to stay calm.

"Well, I can't exactly describe that to you, but well, she showed me that painting and probably the next time we do _that_ , I'm going to show you whatever Elora showed me, in real-life. the painting, it basically has Sara in your bedroom. I mean, it's your very own queeny bedroom – the one where you sleep with my brother every night. And well, she's in some very lacy housecoat that has a long, lingering trail and she's in front of your dressing table and examining your crown. Exactly the one that you're wearing right now. I don't know why, but the thought that Sara was there being the queen in your palace instead of you just freaks me out a bit more than it probably should."

"Well, we'll talk about this later and maybe you can even actually show me the painting. But for tonight please don't stress over it. if anything happens with Sara, it couldn't be tonight because she's at your place attending your party." I tried to comfort Iris.

"But then, she also is at Forening and you are _not_ in your room. So Sara has all the free time to sneak into your room and play with your crown." with dread I realized that it was true.

"You don't know Sara; she would never do anything to offend me or break me. she might be a Vittra but she's definitely not evil." not if she wants to make up for whatever she has already done to me, I added mentally.

"Oh, Wendy, being a Vittra doesn't change Sara's personality in any way from being evil or non-evil." She said almost frustratedly. "Plus, Loki doesn't think she's not that evil afterall."

I looked at her, my jaw nearly detaching from the rest of my face. Iris walked away in frustration and hopelessness, and as she left three of her phrases left their effects on me. _Sara was there being the queen in your palace instead of you. she also is at Forening and you are_ not _in your room. Loki doesn't think she's not that evil afterall._ That was not all. I also remembered Loki's last word before he . . . . _Sara._ Was what Iris saying anything to do with what Loki said? with Sara common in both of them, did they have a similar motive?


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Unexpected Escape

A day later Iris and I were in my room (the one that had previously been Elora's). whatever I had viewed just a minute ago was unbelievable: Elora had just brought over to me a canvas which was more-or-less fully painted, and the scene painted on it wasn't any understatement to what Iris had told me on her pre-debutante. Sara was there in a pearly blue laced housecoat whose lacy tail trailed back on the floor. and she was right in my very own room in her nightgown, standing at the dressing table and examining the tiara.

Her expression wasn't of anything, or rather of everything; sadness, victory, heart-break, jealousy, guilt, crave, conflict, pain, excitement. On close examination and observation, I realized that her hair, left open, was kind of dirty and unwashed and her skin was occasionally dabbed in dust particles. The scene was indeed puzzling, and I wondered if somehow I could change the precognitive painting by changing whatever I had earlier planned, somewhat like what I had done when Elora had painted a scene of everyone dead.

"Well, this is puzzling." I said. When I had asked Elora if she could specify more about the painting and approximately which time the scene is actually going to take place, she had replied that it was something beyond her abilities to do so. "Only if we had known how much time was left for this scene to take place."

"Well, it won't delay much. Your room is exactly the same right now as it was in the painting. I mean, look; the position of the stuff is the same, so possibly it wouldn't have been about some thousand years later. Plus, Sara also hasn't changed much in looks; you know, in the way that she hasn't aged much or her hair hasn't greyed. So, that means this scene is going to occur pretty soon. Also, if you would've paid attention to the glass wall that is just barely visible in the painting, the blinds are drawn. I mean, either she doesn't want to be shown from outside due to some very secretive purpose she has visited here for, or she wants extra protection and is taking these measures of shutting up stuff over here.

"Maybe both of them, actually. And also, it is in the nighttime most-probably since she's in a nightgown and the blinds are drawn. But the fact that it is nighttime doesn't cancel off the facts that she could've also come here for some secretive purpose and wants extra protective measures. So . . . maybe I'm just stretching it a bit too far, but still, maybe my theories are a bit lunatic, but somewhere they make sense. I guess."

"You should've been in the Scotland Yard." I smirked lightly.

"Yeah, preferably a Trylle Scotland Yard, but it's a pity that here I get to go ahead and work like some duchess and be a part of a reunision even I myself am not very well-versed of, and get to connect people to the dead world for reasons even I am not much informed about. I mean – sorry, that wasn't meant to be said."

It was one of those moments when I felt like tormenting myself for being such a bitch to others. Probably earlier Iris hadn't much thought about the reasons of what she was being made to do all this, but now that it has been quite a time, she has come to think of it, and much naturally was getting this feeling that she was being used by her own sister-in-law to do some illegitimate favors which she herself didn't understand.

"Um . . . anyways, can we get back to our research work about the painting?" asked Iris awkwardly. "So what do you think, should we inform other people in Forening about this painting? I mean, of course we wouldn't say anything about you being involved in all this matter, but we'll just white-lie a bit probably, and say that I was talking to ghosts and just came out with this painting. What do you say to that?"

I remained silent. "I don't think so."

"Okay, as you say. But don't you think we should probably try to get more about what this painting could mean? About what actually is going on about the Vittra?" she was obviously trying to distract me from my invading worries about torturing Iris, but I wasn't going to let myself in.

"No, we would not." My temper rose to a level which caused it to break. "Elora's paintings can be reversed. I have reversed one before, and not let it happen. I can do it again. There will no more mentioning of the painting again, and just remember the fact that we have more in our lives than just a bloody painting. _You_ have more to your life."

And then I walked away, leaving Iris in my room. I didn't know where to go, so went to the library. Hidden amidst the bookshelves I shed some tears before I started engaging myself in search for nothing particular in the library.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Thomas Holmes, head of trackers' department spoke. "Anything particular I can help you look for here?"

"Um . . ." I tried to think of what to reply. "I am searching for something on healer trolls."

Thomas bowed and went over to some bookshelf in the depth of the library, and scanned his eyes through the titles of each books. I wasn't much sure if I actually needed the healer book or not, since afterall what could I do with the healer information. All I knew was that pure Trylle had the purest and the best of the healer qualities, and could in fact also bring back a person from the dead using their abilities (though this process considerably weakened them up for some time before they could again retrieve back their strength).

Half Trylle and half Vittra however possessed healing qualities that are not as fine and perfect as wholly Trylle people did, and they could not bring a person back from the dead. I knew it very well that Aurora would never agree on bringing back _him_ , and though I could compel her in doing so, owing her an explanation later would be pretty much of a problem. Plus, I'm not sure whether a queen manipulating marksinnas against their wills into something this serious would ever be compatible with my reputation.

Thomas anyways picked up three books for me: _Do Skojare Healers Actually Exist? Combined Theories From Major Leaders As To Whether Skojare Tribes Actually Have Healing Qualities_ ; _Healers From All Troll Tribes_ ; and _Guidebook on Trylle Healers_. I wasn't interested in Skojare healing mysteries, so I just took the other two books with myself.

I wasn't yet ready to go face Iris or Tove or anyone else, so I stayed in the library itself and briefly decided to check into the book. There wasn't anything much great in whatever I managed to read from _Guidebook on Trylle Healers_ , however it turned out that the fact that they could bring back people from the dead was true.

Two days passed after the day in the library. I was pleasantly having my dull breakfast in my chambers. Since it was situated in such a manner that two of its walls were of glass, I somehow always used to find it like a greenhouse. But now it seemed like the most perfect place with the bright, late-afternoon sun gleaming over the metal sculptors that decorated the room, and my drug bracelet (there was very few of the drug left inside it) and the book's on healers were placed right next to my breakfast arrangement.

Somehow after what Iris had said to me about being used up for some work without even knowing the deeper reasons for it, I couldn't help feel guilty about it, and since the past two days though spoken occasionally to her, not used her anymore for getting back to the dead.

Meanwhile there was still this lust and thirst inside me which made me want to meet Loki, if not Elora. But it wasn't much compatible with the guilt, so for the time being I was choosing to let the guilt win over the thirst.

There was this 'speak of the devil . . .' moment when Iris actually appeared at the door of my chamber while I had been dealing with the conflicts of my very own guilt and thirst related to her case. She nearly banged the door open, and came in all out of breath, almost like she had been running a marathon.

She was in a white blouse with pink slacks; looking girly and chic, but not the least related to a queen. Also with her was a gym bag, and she literally ran over to where I was sitting. "Hey Iris." I said.

"Look, I know you think that I am insane. I know you think that I'm crazy, too girly, childish, have a big mouth, talk a lot, babble unnecessarily, word-vomit, talk nonsense, am senseless, every trash thing in the world. I know you think that. everyone does. And I agree that I am. But this time, can we just trust and rely on each other? Answer this one Wendy. We need to do so."

She spoke so fast and was already so out of breath, it was difficult to comprehend what was trying to say. "Well, I do trust you . . . you know that."

"Yeah, but this is different. The Vittra. They're coming here. Right now at this fucking second. Where is Tove?"

"He . . . um, I don't know. He's supposed to be somewhere in the palace itself, I guess."

"Okay, listen; you trust me, right? So, for this once just do exactly what I say. And later when we are safe and we have time, I'll explain you every single thing and every single reason."

"Okay."

"Cool, so just rush to your room and get into the most comfortable outfit you could think of. the one in which you can run and jump in. and take some other clothes – the comfortable and athletic ones – with you, and just meet at the kitchen in say, two minutes. Take all your necessary items; your daily necessities, a pillow possibly, some sanitizer, pills, the bracelet, actual running shoes –"

"I don't wear shoes." Apparently it wasn't all that intelligent saying that right now.

"God, no one here does. But still take them anyways. Proper running sneakers, not the high-heels and stuff. Pack them as quickly as possible, and in two minutes we meet in the kitchen."

"What are we doing?" I asked.

"Don't take this as a game, Wendy. It is not. I may look like the kind of person who would love to play all these sorts of games, but surely it is not one, this time. Just be serious about it, and come down to the kitchen. Be as quick as possible, and I'll explain you once we're outside the kitchen."

I didn't half understand what we were doing, but still tried to be as quick as possible with the fetus inside me. I stayed in the same loose gown I was wearing since if I wore something of pants like Iris was, the belly bump would show too much. I didn't know what to pack, so I took another dress of the same kind and for another safety measure took a sleeveless shirt and slacks underneath it. I took a torch, some vomiting bags, a watch, some paper napkins, a bandage, a sanitizer, the drug bracelet and the two books that I was currently reading.

It all got inside a simple satchel, and when I met Iris outside the kitchen it was clear that I had taken beyond two minutes to get down. Iris had got two gym bags by this time and I suspected that some of the space inside the gym bag was made out of the food she had probably got out of the kitchen.

"Don't tell me that you're actually going to wear this?" she made a face.

"I have my own reasons." I was already tired of whatever Iris was up to.

"Fine, don't blame me when you trip on your own stuff. Hope you're wearing shoes, at least? Good, let's get going now. you already took more time than you were supposed to."

And then Iris started running over to the door that leads to the Secret Garden. I couldn't keep up with her speed so, but somehow managed to reach in the heart of the Secret Garden. "I don't even know what we're doing Iris." I huffed.

She looked at me, and said "We're running away from here."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Reasons

"Oh yeah, and you thought that the Secret Garden would be the best place for all this since it's so very _secretive_." My tone was an evil mock.

"I was thinking about this." She said, and then she ran over to one corner of the garden which gave me an odd sense of déjà vu. I suddenly remembered what it was; this was the place where Loki had proposed me of marriage and had kissed me for the first time in the dead of the night. I had to refuse of course, but now I am wondering if I had maybe accepted and ran away he wouldn't have had the fate which he now had.

Iris however ran over straight to the wall that announced the end of the garden's plot towards this side, and started scaling that wall. I immediately recognized it with more sense of the same déjà vu that this was the very unrepaired wall which Loki had scaled in order to come to the Secret Garden.

"I . . . I can't climb that." I said, dread surrounding me.

"You very well can." Said Iris. I shook my head, and she let out her hand. "Give me your bags."

I handed my satchel, and she immediately tossed it over the other side of the wall with her own two gym bags. She pulled me up (though my weight showed strains in her tendons and muscles) as much as she could, and even I myself tried to get my body to move upwards. Finally we both were on the top of the wall. iris simply jumped down, but for me, it was much more difficult.

"I can't do this either." I felt tears threatening, at the different consequences if I jumped down like Iris.

"Wendy", it was strange that today she had been continuously calling me by my name, but in a way it sounded much better than 'Your Majesty'. "I'm a pure Trylle and I could do this. You are half-Trylle and half-Vittra. Just go ahead and show the Vittra blood in yourself."

Somehow her words gave me a new type of an inspiration and encouragement, and I remembered all those times such as when Kim had critically stabbed my belly, when I had tried to imitate Finn and swing from a vine from my bedroom window and had fallen down a storey instead, when Kyra had made me cough blood, when my debutante ball had led to the glass shard in my waist, when I had managed to decapitate a pure-blooded Vittra with a sword. All those times were the times when I had survived the circumstances and proved that I was physically more than what an ordinary Trylle would have been. I had been a Vittra.

And when I jumped from the top of the wall, it was like I was back to the form when I could call myself a Vittra. I landed on my feet, my hands touching the ground only when my feet couldn't keep the balance. A bone-cracking vibration carried over my spine, pelvis and on the soles of my feet where I landed, but when the sensation had faded, there was nothing but the slight aftermath of the fact that I had jumped from that height.

Beyond this wall of the Secret Garden were just wild jungles and bluffs. Iris collected all our bags and luggage quickly and started running across the forested area. This was the part where shoes were a necessity in order to not slow down your speed. But even though I was in proper running shoes and was not carrying any baggages, I wasn't able to keep pace with Iris.

"Hurry up, Wendy." Called Iris. "Show the Vittra in yourself."

It wasn't possible in the beginning, but then the Vittra in myself started increasingly gaining its strength and soon even with the fetus in my womb, I was running faster than Iris was. Right through the forest, we moved speedily until we were at the foot of a bluff.

I immediately sat down and grabbed my belly, the aftermaths of this exercise causing cramps and draining my energy. Iris dropped the bags on the forest floor as soon as she reached at the foot of the bluffs, and began heaving dramatically.

"You know, you really underestimate your speed and strength." She spoke through her fast breaths.

I smiled at her, and said "Okay, so what is it now? Why are we here?"

"The Vittra. They're waging an attack on us. On you, actually. I mean, look, maybe you think that I'm just this childish kiddo with a big mouth who goes around telling everything to everyone without concern, but then it's not all true. I've got secrets with my own self too. And out of them, is the fact that I've probably talked and found out more from Elora and Loki than you have done. Than you would ever think."

"Hang on, Iris; how do you even know who is Loki?" I asked.

"God, Wendy. You may think that Loki and Elora belong to you because you love them and they love you back. Well, they kind of do. But at this state and stage of their afterlives, they belong – not in your world, but in _my_ world. And as a fact, I have more interactions and conversations with them than I myself ever thought I would. Also, ever since I had connected you to these two people, they – especially Loki – had just kept tagging me in order to stay close to you.

"So, here's the thing. After my debutante ball, Elora had painted two more paintings. One was of your very own palace. On the gates there were probably a million posters saying that Wendy Kroner – former queen of Forening missing. If found, something blah blah blah. I mean, that was all over the black polished gates of the mansion. Those posters of you. Which signifies, that you are missing. Plus there was also a pretty high-classed reward for finding you.

"First Elora and Loki had both assumed something completely else, but then Elora made another painting with her abilities. And this one was of Tove being captured by the Vittra trackers. I mean, I didn't know they were Vittra trackers but Loki confirmed that he recognized one of them, so that's how we came to the conclusion.

"Anyways, it was all very vague, but whatever we could figure out from all these paintings, was that first of all Vittra people would be coming to Forening. We weren't sure which ones exactly, but as far as the paintings told us, there would be Sara and the trackers. And then you would've gone missing. Which first looked to us like a kidnapping. And when we saw Tove getting arrested or captured by the Vittra, we thought that maybe it was because he had been the one behind your capturing or kidnapping, or maybe because he had done something wrong to you and that's why was getting punished for it.

"And when we saw Sara in your room, we assumed that it was since the Forening queen was missing and the king was caught in some dirty work, the people had requested the Vittra queen for some assistance in handling the kingdom. And that's why Sara was there, ruling temporarily and the Vittra trackers had been there to catch hold of some culprit – which ultimately turned out to be Tove – or to track you down.

"However, today when I called up one of my friends from Ondarike and asked if I could come over or something, her reply was that her parents had gone out for some important work and that she wasn't supposed to call anyone in or go out. And well, she also told me that her parents had left early morning along with some royal officials and a whole bunch of trackers. Well, that was told to Loki and Elora, and since then, we made a totally different assumption. Actually, it was Loki who made this theory.

"Today was the day in Elora's precognitive future when Sara and her trackers would be arriving here in Forening. Surely you have till now not yet gone missing, so what could they be coming here for? Point. Maybe for some peace treaty or some other information, but there was no information in advance to us about the Vittra's arrival in Forening. So, in the end, Loki assumed with pure confidence that Sara and her trackers were coming in Forening for some dangerous and warring work.

"It apparently wasn't very warlike since none of Elora's paintings had shown violence or bloodshed. However Loki assumed that Sara and the Vittra trackers were coming here basically to capture and imprison the _rulers_. Which goes to a major threat upon you and Tove. Tove had been shown been captivated in one of her pictures, and then there is another one where you are said to be missing. Loki said that the Vittra's main goal is to bring down the rulers, so us three – our main goal came to saving the rulers.

"Now, this save-the-rulers plan came up today morning, and that was when I came rushing here, having packed up all my stuff and got you down and out of the palace so that today when the Vittra troops arrive here, they capture Tove but do not get to touch you. And maybe we'll travel up the bluffs to some safe spying spot that has a view of Forening and your mansion, and will stay there. Got the entire thing?"

I nodded. Surely, it was complicated, but then a part of it was clear. "I have a few doubts."

"Okay, I'll try to clarify them as coolly as I can."

"First of all, rulers mean me and Tove. Tove is your blood brother, your only sibling in the world. I am however just your secretive, mood-changing, depressive, weird and horrible sister in law. Why did you choose to save me and not him?"

"Well, Elora's paintings – they are the future, and you can't just escape from it. Also since the future is unchangeable and ultimately at some point everything in the future will have to come according to the paintings, let's not try to go against the paintings. Since Elora's precognition says that you will be considered missing in Forening, to make that true, I have taken you along with me for hiding. Also, since Tove is ultimately going to be caught and captured, I chose not to take him, since no matter how far I travel with Tove, the precognitive future assures me with the fact that Tove will be captured and imprisoned.

"Also, you are half-Trylle half-Vittra, also belonging from a royal lineage. You are supposed to have more power, strength, mortality, abilities and reputation than anyone else here. More than Tove. So, I have the trust and faith in _you_ that _you_ can particularly rebel against whatever evil plans Sara is up to, and defeat them all. Even Elora and Loki think the same about you. That's why we chose you."

Her words made me feel suddenly all too sentimental and teary, as if many people were all dependent on me and my strength. "Thank you." I whispered. "For choosing me. For saving me."

And then I again proved the Vittra inside me by climbing the bluffs so beautifully, without tripping or falling (and with the additional human inside me). Today was probably the only day when I had realized how much Vittra I actually was, and how much I was capable of being one.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Sara's Secrets

Our ultimate destination turned out to be a small, vague cave in the bluffs. It was more towards the top, but after our cave came the extremely steep and critical part which couldn't be climbed any further. It also wasn't a cave, but just a narrow passage in the mountain's rock that lead to a large, empty space. It was also pretty disappointing, since ever since Iris had said that we were on the run, I hadn't actually expected living in a cave. More like city-hopping and dyed disguises.

Anyways, it was the perfect spot for Iris and she stuck to it. We were both tired with that hectic one hour of quick plans and running this far away from the mansion. Iris roughly laid the blankets she had got, on the floor of the cave, and just lay down there. I napped for some time and probably expected her to wake up later, but she only did when it was nightfall.

"Oh, I had almost forgotten. Loki had told me to once connect you to him. He said he wanted to explain you everything in his own words. I mean, I'm not sure what is that exactly that she wants you to know, maybe just whatever I told you from his point of view. But, well, you can ask him yourself . . . once you're there, of course." She spoke suddenly.

"Oh." I couldn't think of anything else to say. "Are you sure you wanna do this?"

"Of course. Loki, you know what, seems to know a lot more than he probably told. Or maybe he just knows a lot. Something from a deeper point than we all do." he said.

I nodded. "Right now?"

"Yup."

I clutched her hand, and then with brain power transmitted from both our minds, I got transferred to the ghost world. Loki was right there, which was pretty surprising.

"Duh" he said, as he looked around our cave. "This is where you choose to live?"

"You can see where we are living?" I was somehow pretty surprised at that too.

"Just see, I can't actually change anything about it." he replied.

"Cool, so . . . Iris told me that you wanted to talk to me." I began.

"Um . . ." Loki looked around nervously. "Is she there right now?"

"Of course she is. How else would I be speaking to you right now?"

"No, but can she hear us?"

"Want me out of your conversation, people?" came Iris's voice, sounding as if passing through a layer of electrons and neurons.

"Would you mind, please? Promise, the queen is gonna give you some 'modern clothes' to make up with." Said Loki. Even though it was in the form of a joke, I knew that this wasn't anything that Loki would like to share with anyone but me. He hadn't even called Elora with himself, and wanted Iris out of the conversation.

"How do you expect her to not hear anything?" I asked.

"God, Wendy. I didn't think you would be this illiterate. Death-seeing Trylle can just be a part of making the bond possible, and hearing their talks or seeing them is entirely optional. In fact, more energy conservation if you choose to not listen or see us."

"That doesn't make me illiterate." I defensed.

"Okay, so, listen, this Sara is like double character. You know, by face and by nature she may look pretty shy and sweet and caring, but inside she's like the most greedy and craving bitch ever."

"Loki, she helped you and saved you multiple times from Oren's deathwish." I scolded him incredulously.

"Hmp, Oren's deathwish was to own you, not to disown me." he snorted. "Plus, she didn't help me from Oren the very last time."

That stung a bit too deep, especially hearing it from Loki's mouth. I gulped. "Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. It's just that you didn't actually know Sara all that well. I mean, I grew up with her. I know that in front of Oren, she's this shy and beautiful woman who wouldn't even be capable of hurting an ant. But inside that, she's like a total evil pussy. Well, even I didn't think so, until I realized what her evilness and dark plans would lead to.

"It just started when she was wed to Oren after his divorce with Elora, instead of with me. I mean, I know she loved me like a small brother, even I did, but then she never actually wanted to marry a markis. She always wanted to be closer to the ruling family; she wanted to rule. And her disappointment came over when it turned out that her ruling partner was a pure-blooded, evil Vittra king Oren who never forgave and didn't take things that lightly to an extent. Also someone who was blessed with extended immortality.

"She ever since had believed that she could reunite the Trylle and Vittra successfully, but with Oren on the rule, it would be an impossibility. In early stages I agreed with her, and we both worked secretly in order to somehow find ways to kill pure-blooded Vittra. Afterall we both were the two greatest and most actually rebellious haters of Oren. For years her wishes remained an impossible mission and in a way it was something that she could never accomplish. Afterall it took real abilities of a royal and pure-blooded lineage to make yourself capable of such skillful assassination.

"When Oren however became obsessed with his plan of bringing back his changeling half-Trylle and half-Vittra daughter with Elora back to the Vittra kingdom, Sara got this bizarre idea of proving to _you_ how cruel your own father was and somehow make _you_ kill him. We both knew that because of your parential combination, blood and lineage, you would be the best of everyone's hopes in order to kill Oren. So that is how we – which is everyone – started proving to you and other Trylle people that Oren was a dangerous threat towards us all, and was needed to be killed. Even Tove and Elora gave into this part of our plan.

"Even then this plan between me and Sara sounded appealing to me and I didn't actually think or care about what would ultimately happen to _you_ when Sara reunites everyone. But when I realized that I was actually falling in love with you, I also realized that if Sara would be the one reuniting the Trylle and the Vittra, _she_ would also be the one ruling over the combines regions of Trylle and Vittra.

"Maybe she'd also have a king with her – most likely someone from the Trylle – but other than that, there would be no space for you. You would automatically be either banished from the post you are meant to gain by your blood and actions, or killed by Sara for better purposes. Your lack of actual family or anyone from your blood also made Sara's plans stronger. And with her likeable charm, she could manipulate the entire troll population of the Trylle and Vittra into a harmonious region.

"Surely, it is unlikely for a by-blood queen to drop down to a marksinna, so either you would be banished or exiled, or assassinated. This thought made me drop down from Sara's plans. Now, that I knew at some point of your life you would go ahead and defeat Oren, I had however quit from any of Sara's plans of reunision. Not that it helped, because either ways Oren needed to be killed, and after that Sara would never remain happy with just the Vittra region. She would simply jump ahead to unite the Trylle and Vittra into one kingdom.

"Somehow I could probably just avoid it all if I tell Oren everything about Sara's plans and he would simply slit her throat off. And then when you finish off Oren too, there wouldn't be any ruler left, but me. but she knew that I had just as many reasons to be slaughtered by Oren as much as she did. All my antics that had got me into trouble with Oren could've been fatal to me, if not for Sara who saved me and protected me. In exchange I was kind of forced to keep her side and not let Oren know about the plan. If I did, we were both going to get killed by that dickhead.

"So, finally I just waited and hoped for the best. Maybe we'll see how things would go after Oren was dead, since till before his death, we all shared this common motive. However, the bad part came when . . . you know what, and then after that Oren was killed and Sara crowned the queen. After this, Sara played into her best efforts to reunite with you people; helping to neutralize the suspicion that Iris had created in the human world, inviting you people to her coronation, calling in Iris several times to Ondarike, coming to Iris's debutante ball, and many others.

"In fact she almost used _Iris_ for her plans of reunision. And now according to what sense I find in the paintings Elora's made, the thing that I suspect the most is that she along with her Vittra trackers are coming to wage an attack in Forening. Not to the common people, but to the rulers, which goes to just you and Tove. Tove is not as strong and blessed ability-vise as you are, also the painting shows that he is captured ultimately, so we three – Elora, me and Iris – decided to send _you_ and Iris into hiding.

"That's the best possible way to keep you from getting captured. Afterall as far as I know, she wants to just assassinate you rulers off, and set to rule instead. Or maybe Tove would be luckier for his sex, and Sara would marry him if not for the awkward age difference. But you were anyways to be gotten rid of. And people needed you more, so it was essential for us to choose you over Tove. So, that's how I came to the conclusion behind Elora's paintings, something that maybe I wouldn't like to share with Iris because it's more the type of thing that you would concern with you, your parents, your existence and your life."

"Okay, that unlocks many door of secrets at the moment." I said, absorbing in all the information I had been fed at the moment and trying to connect all what I had been told today by Iris and Loki. I began to think that when Loki had said Sara's name right before Oren's sword had taken everything away from him, did he mean to warn me about the fact that Sara was exceptionally dangerous for me.

"Hope you don't mind I kept these away from you. Afterall, if I had told you Sara's plans, it wouldn't have been any better for you."

I nodded. "Okay, so . . . I was just wondering how come you and Elora both formed a sort of a team and worked that way. I mean, she's supposed to hate you and all that."

"The hate doesn't come now at this type of a situation. Here we both hate Oren, love you, and want to turn Sara's plans upside down because of you. Even Iris respects you a lot, and hates Sara because she wants to capture you and her brother Tove. Maybe also because she has already captured Tove. And with all those similarities and common motives, hate doesn't stop us from teaming up."

When I returned back to the cave with Iris staring at the ceiling thoughtfully, there was nothing much to do, so I took out something to eat. Iris had almost raided the entire kitchen, so till now there wasn't any lack of food. I had some of the canned peaches and pineapples, the carbohydrate submerging into my body.

"Wendy?" it was Iris. She was still staring at the roof, but was speaking to me. she was currently wearing the bracelet.

"Yeah? You want something to eat?"

"No. well, I just wanted to ask something that I had asked you before but you hadn't trusted me just enough to answer it." she paused. "You know, I know a lot about Elora, with her being the ex-queen, she's your mom, Oren's ex-wife, etc. But I hardly knew who was Loki, except that he was a Vittra. I mean, I still don't get how come you're connected to him. Is he Oren's and Elora's son, your brother? Or, maybe . . . I just don't know what it is. Also contacting him and Elora was always very antidepressing for you. It acted somewhat like a drug or alcohol does. It gave you some kind of a high, that I never managed to discover why exactly. One thing, Loki was important to you, but why, I had no idea for that."

I hesitated. I paused for some time, and then spoke whatever I had once never dreamt I would ever be telling Iris. "Loki, he was the love of my life."

Iris was stunned by my admission. She took off the bracelet. "I had known him for just a few months, but even in that short time, we had quite a lot between us. He was also a half-Trylle and half-Vittra like me, but he had been brought up in Ondarike. Everything was settled between us, but it was just in the great war where I killed Oren, when Loki had been stabbed to death by Oren. I would never forgive Oren for that, even in his afterlife.

"Sara was a healer, but being half-Trylle and half-Vittra, she didn't possess the capability to bring someone back from the dead. For months, I had lead a dreadful, miserable life without Loki. I had psychiatrists, was on drugs, was nutrioned directly, was counseled. However, nothing changed. It was only when you proved your abilities, that I began to see some hope in all this. For you, my reasons of using you to view and talk to Loki might be something romantically silly, but for me, it's just that . . . it means everything to me."

Iris was still and frozen. "So, how does it feel telling me all this? No wonder, I could've bet you would've never dreamed of ever telling me all this."

"It's kind of amazing. Makes me feel floaty and light. As if it's good to release some of the pressure out of myself sometimes." I said, smiling.

Iris nodded. "Good, any more pressure to be released?"

"Nothing much. Just that my baby with Loki is due in five months, so make some plan against Sara's that settles everything down before my labor."


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Plans and Ideas

Since Iris now knew about my pregnancy, I decided to not wear all those layers and pads that I normally wore publicly to cover up the belly bump. It was in a way pretty comfortable. Once Iris had set up the sleeping bags and blankets carefully and we had eaten some more fruits (Iris ate a lot for someone as skinny as her), it was all well-settled in the cave.

It was almost midnight according to the watch Iris had packed, but the cave was lit up with Iris's torch and mirror arrangement, and it looked pretty beautiful. Almost safe at the moment, since we knew that the light wouldn't be able to make its way through the crooked corridor outside the cave, and no one would even suspect that we both were hiding here at the moment.

Both of us had slept throughout the day, so none of us were sleeping now. I wondered if at this moment, Sara was in my queeny bedroom, examining my tiara. Iris was busy with her Sudoku, and me – not wanting to sleep either – started reading the library book I had taken about healers. I purposely chose the part on Vittra healers, and started reading.

 _The Vittra are trolls that are blessed with physical abilities, so they have a rarer chance to possess such healing abilities. In fact, since Vittra don't possess any sorts of telekinetic or psychic abilities, it is only those half-blood Vittra who can be capable of such abilities that can heal other people and organisms. Skojare-Vittra trolls are available in very rare quantities, but they have pretty unique (though rare) healer qualities, that allow them to manipulate the water in which they live, in such a way that it inhabits healing qualities. This contaminated water is now a healer, that can do things as far as to cure wounds, fractures or major physical injuries._

 _Diseases or injuries that would normally result into coma or death are not possible to be healed by this type of Skojare-Vittra troll magicized water. Also bringing back from death or coma are also some things that cannot be done by the Skojare and Vittra mixed breeds._

 _Trylle – the most ability-vise rich trolls – are however capable of the best healer talents, and Trylle-Vittra are capable of quite intricate healing abilities than any half-blood Vittra would be capable of. these types of trolls would be capable of minor and major injuries, fractures, sprains, cancer, virally-infected diseases, internal damage, etc. with almost easy efforts._

 _Retrieval from coma is also possible, though it drains out a lot from the troll doing so, for a couple of days, after which the Trylle-Vittra (due to the Vittra self-healing capacity inside it) again gets back to its normal form. Retrieval from death is also possible, but at the cost of the healer Vittra-Trylle's life. This would mean that when a dead person is brought back, the healer is sent back to the death – if a half Vittra and half Trylle. This kind of healing is rarely done since healers are not known to sacrifice their lives for someone else's survival._

I shut the book in the shock and excitement of my new discovery. This would only mean that Sara very well _could_ heal Loki; she could heal anyone. But that would be at the cost of her life, and since she wanted to stay alive and reunite the Trylle and Vittra, she knowingly did not give up her life. I suddenly fell too angry at Sara, and wanted to actually hit her.

"What's it?" said Iris. "Somehow your face just turned the color of a tomato."

"Sara; you were right she's evil. She could have saved Loki, but she didn't do it, because she also knew that to bring back someone from the dead, you would have to sacrifice your own life."

"Of course she wouldn't do so, because she would've definitely not wanted to give away her life for someone like Loki. I mean, I don't know how close Loki and Sara exactly were, but surely no one who didn't have a mother-child relationship would've ever given up their lives for each other."

"You have a point, but when I had actually asked Sara to save him, she had said that she just wasn't capable of this. When actually at the cost of her life, she could actually do this."

"Duh, not all people in the world are born to serve the lord of abnegation." Said Iris. "Plus, doesn't that give you another idea? the fact that Sara _is_ capable of bringing back people from dead. I mean, Wendy, there is more to whatever Sara is capable of than just the fact that she lied to you purposely and didn't help you."

I suddenly got what she was getting it. "You mean . . . but how will I make Sara agree to this?"

"Someone told me you possessed persuasion. Perhaps the word 'persuasion' is supposed to work exactly like its international definition in the world."

"God, how much did Loki _not_ tell you about me?"

"Actually it was Finn who told me this one. You know, during the time when he maintained this inseparable tracker relationship with me. I had just asked what were your great abilities that had made you defeat the Vittra king for god's sake. And his reply was a pretty long list, but I had just remembered the fact that you could manipulate anyone telekinetically. Well, that kind of scared the shit out of me since I didn't know what all things you can have in your way if you just go around manipulating people to your comforts."

My face kind of darkened at hearing Finn's name, and I tried to not let it show that easily. "So, you're saying that I go back to the palace and use persuasion on Sara to make her bring Loki back from the death?"

"Yes, afterall she was trying to kill or banish the Trylle rulers. It does make perfect sense for you to just kill her off that perfect way –"

"But, what if she was trying to reunite the Trylle and the Vittra? Doing the jobs that I never could do? people would never accept me back as their queen if I cause a crack between the Trylle and Vittra again and do not cooperate in the reunion."

"Our relationship with the Vittra is perfect at the moment. However the fact that the Vittra queen has been trying to tamper with the Trylle rulers, would have definitely caused some uproars and protests from the Trylle common folks, who would want back their original kings and queens. You can be the perfect symbol and model for such people."

I didn't want to do all this, but throughout the night, we planned (actually Iris did most of the planning while I just uninterestedly stared around) a lot about what would be the plans for the day after. It was only at the break of dawn, that Iris finally suggested some rest for both of us.

A late breakfast was of cottage cheese cubes with tomatoes and some canned cranberry juice (which none of us liked due to its processed effects). I kept reading more of the healer books, and some of it actually went into whatever plans we had made last night.

We both couldn't have an actual shower or bath, so Iris just sponge-cleaned the dirt out of herself. I followed suit. We both changed out of our clothes, and today I decided on the sleeveless shirt and pants, while Iris was in a similar short skirt and ruffled blouse. I charged my entire self with the drug bracelet (it really had nothing left out of it), and this was when we walked out of the cave.

Descending the mountains was in a way easier than ascending the same slopes. In the end, Iris came down sliding on her ass down the smooth rock. Knowing the fact that I was pregnant, Iris was even more hospitable towards me, and bore in an extra effort for me to get down.

We walked through the forest, and this time the exciting fear, the nervousness and the energy-conservation mode took us more time than when we had ran through it the previous day. Iris in between our journey, switched to her ghost mode, where she could see and hear and communicate with all ghosts visible to her.

"We're to take another way around here." She said briefly to me, and then began muttering further to her ghosts, and taking my hand in hers, began leading me around in a completely different area than the one from where we had arrived from. In a way it was relieving since I was pretty sure that I couldn't climb the wall to the Secret Garden again.

The end of the forests brought us to a very familiar area. I immediately recognized where this was. It was the very path between Elora's mansion and the bluffs and forested areas that me and Finn had been to together, in order to take into a spectacular view of the entire kingdom.

Following the same route, we went back to the main gate of the mansion. I immediately went to my persuasion mode, and began weaving a spherical persuasion over both me and Iris, to everyone. In my mind, I whispered at a loud range and with extreme brain power, so that the persuasion would work on everyone over a 100 feet radius. _You will not stop us. You will let us go. We are not of any importance to you._

And as per our expected success, the Vittra trackers who had been guarding the mansion did not even glance twice at us, as we slid past. I noticed just like Elora's painting had specified, over the gates and the walls of the mansion, there were missing posters all around with my name and my picture everywhere. It was almost scary.

With me yielding the constant waves of persuasion, Iris and I went inside the mansion. Without wasting much time, we simply hurried over to the room shared by me and Tove. It was empty, and the bed made much neater than I would've done and than Tove would've cared for.

"Where next?" I whispered.

"I'm not very sure, but preferably let's try your chambers, your old room, the Weaponry, the library or the Throne Room."

The closest were my chambers, so we rushed to there, just to find it empty. The Weapon's Room was occupied with many people, though not Sara. Finally the Throne Room revealed what we had been searching for. Sara was there, admiring the red-cushioned throne meant for the rulers, with the tips of her fingers.

I immediately switched off my persuasion, slipped off the bracelet, and revealed my true self (and Iris) to Sara. For a moment, she just stared with astonishment, and then her face curved in a small smile, as she came towards us – though not very close.

"Nice to see you again, Wendy."

"I don't feel the same about it, though." I said.

"How very interesting, isn't it? You escaped all those Vittra guards I had set outside for you. How is that possible?"

"You underestimated me Sara. I killed Oren, the last pure-blooded Vittra king. Surely I could just escape some of your guards too."

She laughed. "That is very interesting. So, now that you've come here specifically to meet my honors, pray what be the reason for that?"

"To seek the reasons behind your actions." I said.


	16. Epilogue

Epilogue

Oliver. That is what I had decided to name him. It was probably the best news in the world to everyone that the queen was expecting a baby, and even better for me to know that the baby was at least alive. Afterall Iris's stunts, all that one day of hiding, dealing with the Vittra queen's attacks, and many other physical efforts had caused me to almost think that the baby would've died in the womb as well.

Heaven bless it, it was alive. That's how Oliver Staad came to existence on earth, the heir to the throne of ruling the combined regions of Trylle and Vittra. After that mini-war with Sara where she had got killed and Loki had risen from the dead, me and Loki had made a public appearance where we had informed everyone about Sara's evil ideas of banishing me and Tove even though we hadn't done anything wrong.

We had said about how we both thought that a Trylle origin Trylle-Vittra and a Vittra origin Vittra-Trylle could get married, and still successfully reunite both the kingdoms (the people were too much under the idea of reunision). And after they had suspiciously agreed to it, it turned out that our plan _was_ pretty successful.

Our marriage (my second marriage) had happened in extreme royalty, where every Trylle and Vittra citizen was invited for the grand feast. Tove's divorce just before it was something I would always remember him for. Anyways, after people had discovered that markis Bain had been pretty much involved in Sara's plans of pushing me out of the throne, he had been stripped out of his title.

Instead, the new chancellor was Tove – which he thought was a less stressful post than a king. Matt had gained pretty much of popularity for his architecture. Rhys was going to some manks college pretty soon, and Matt was also pretty eager to take him to see Kim. As for what happened to the particle that I had collected during Loki's rise from the dead, I had just preserved it carefully in a box. As a memory of that evil-minded person who was responsible for saving Loki.

However the best part was that now I was back to my queen post, Loki was the king, and we were happily ruling over the combination of Trylle and Vittra with the most adorable child in the world.


End file.
